


by the river potomac i sat down and wept

by peterstank



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Courtroom Drama, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, it’s soft at the end i promise, standard winter soldier torture and bodily mutilation, vague descriptions of non-consensual touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2020-12-24 16:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 63,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21102719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterstank/pseuds/peterstank
Summary: They say everyone’s got another half out there somewhere, like all our souls are split in two.I don’t think it’s like that. I think you’ve got mine and I’ve got yours, and I promise I’ll look after it good while I’m here just so long as you do the same for me.or: bucky barnes atones





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> before we jump in, i firstly want to thank my main squeeze and bomb ass beta, [@tempestaurora](https://tempestaurora.tumblr.com/) \- you listened to me bitch about this at all hours of the day and you deserve a reward for that. it wouldn’t be what it is without your help <3 
> 
> second: a round of applause to [@xxx-cat-xxx](https://xxx-cat-xxx.tumblr.com/) for checking over the German dialogue in this fic, and to [@somethingjustsouthofbrilliance](https://somethingjustsouthofbrilliance.tumblr.com/) for doing the same with the Russian—you guys rock
> 
> lastly, to [@theavengays](https://theavengays.tumblr.com/) for [the post](https://theavengays.tumblr.com/post/187631794103/bucky-is-on-the-run-after-tws-and-build-a-bear-has) that prompted this whole mess, it literally wouldn’t exist without you! 
> 
> y’all ready to get fucked up and wrecked?!

> If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.
> 
> -Paulo Coelho

  
_ Act One _

_omnium rerum principia parva sunt_

. 

_Do you remember that night we both got drunk and we were stumbling down the street after Doug kicked us out of Harvey’s Bar? We were laughing and then you were yelling but I can’t remember why. It’s all a blur in my head. _

_Anyway, you walked off the curb and neither of us were looking and I think we wouldn’t have been able to see it anyway, we were so wasted, but this car came peeling at you going fifty at 0400; and Steve, I swear to god, I thought you were gonna die._

_I grabbed you. Your arm, I think, or maybe the scruff of your neck, and I pulled you and we both went falling back. We fell forever, even after the car was long gone. We just laid there panting for a century and a half, and I remember how close I held you to me, like if there was no space between us you’d just sink right in and find home in my heart. I wanted that. I wanted to carry you and keep you safe. I remember being so angry right then because I couldn’t protect you from getting sick, I couldn’t protect you from the bullies, and I couldn’t even protect you from yourself._

_That was the night I got my draft letter, Stevie._

_I might’ve told you. That might’ve been why you were screaming your damn head off. Thank fuck you were so out of it you can’t remember.  
_

_But I was so scared. I’m still scared every time I see you out here with your stars and stripes, looking for all the world like you should’ve been the one protecting me all along._

_Sometimes I think we both died that night. I think a piece of us is still laying out in the snow._

  
.

“Batter up, Barnes.”

Bucky is ripped from the half-sleep he had been fading in and out of, floating like on his back in water. His eyes sting: the smoke, the exhaustion, the salt from unshed tears. Above him Morita holds Bucky’s rifle out butt-first.

Bucky moves carefully into position at the mouth of the trench, eyes scanning the copse of trees about seventy yards out where shadows shift without discernible shape. They could be animals, they could be Germans.

“You know, I still don’t get how you do it.”

Bucky squirms in the dirt like a burrowing gopher in a vain attempt to get warm. “Do what?”

“See that far. Shoot the way you do.”

Bucky grins. “Haven’t you heard yet, Morita? I’m God’s fucking gift to humanity.”

Morita snorts and leans on his back against the sandbags, cracking open a can of lima beans. He holds them out to Bucky, who shakes his head. 

These days either he’s not hungry in the way that makes him want to vomit at the sight of food, or he’s nursing a carnal kind of starvation, like he could bury his maw into the first warm-blooded thing he crosses paths with and ravenously rip it to shreds without remorse. 

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

“Can’t,” Morita says, chewing.

Bucky can understand that pretty well. Lately his dreams have been like the shadows his eyes track now; not quite visible, just him and the dark and the echoes of his past. He hears Becca’s laugh and then when he wakes up, he can’t remember the sound. It’s like the memories are saying goodbye; one day he will forget the ice in Steve’s voice when he’s pissed off beyond recognition, and he will forget just what sounds made up the heartbeat of New York City.

His mouth twists.

“What?” Morita asks.

“Nothing. It’s just quiet out here.”

Morita shakes his head and shovels more food in his mouth. “Clearly you’ve never lived on a farm.”

“Nah, ain’t for me. I’m a Brooklyn boy, born and bred.”

“My condolences.”

Bucky snorts quietly. They live in silence in the trenches, especially at night. He fucking hates it, misses the loud booming of the dance halls and Steve’s god awful snores. 

“What’s so bad about my city?”

“All those people crowded together in one place?” Morita shivers. “Couldn’t get me to live there if you paid me millions. Besides, it’s like you said: too damn loud.”

Bucky tries to imagine growing up someplace else, like on a farm the way Morita said. “Don’t think I could stand the smell.”

“Of what?”

“The animals.”

“Like that city doesn’t stink like piss and shit just as bad? Probably worse.”

But Bucky hadn’t meant the waste; he’d meant the way they slaughter the herds. He’d meant the blood.

“Tell me about it?” he asks, purely to have something else to think about.

Morita shrugs. “It was really peaceful. Not the way the countryside here is—all dead like no one’s ever lived there before—but just… the way life is supposed to be. We’d get up with the sunrise and my Mother would cook breakfast, and I’d help my Father with whatever he needed: milking the cattle, shearing the sheep, collecting the eggs, all that. My little sister, Angie, she’d garden from dawn until dusk. It was the only world I knew, you know? Just that fifty acre farm. It seemed so big to me, like I’d never be able to find the end of it, and when I did, maybe I’d just fall right off the edge. And then…”

“Did they draft you?”

Morita shakes his head. “No. They drafted my brother. Then they came walking up the drive with a telegraph and an apology and I—I enlisted.”

Bucky frowns. “They talk you into that?”

“No.” Morita speaks slowly, almost gently. “It was at his funeral. They had the casket open and I… I looked down at his face, my brother’s, and I couldn’t recognise him. It wasn’t just because his eyes were closed, or because time had passed—shit, Barnes, it had only been three months, you know? Three months since it had all started. Anyway, I was looking down at him and I couldn’t really remember who he was, or I guess he just wasn’t who he was supposed to be, and I decided maybe if I could stand in the place where he last stood I could… understand.”

Bucky gnaws at his cheek. “Well you’ve been out here three months now. Are you the same person you were before?”

Morita laughs. “No. God, no.”

“Would you do it all over again?”

Morita thinks on that a moment. “My Mother, she’s a real tough woman, hard as nails. She used to flick our cheeks and quote Chinese proverbs when we did stupid things. _A fall into a ditch makes you wiser_, that was one of her favourites—you don’t know what a ditch is, you fall in, now you know.” He shakes his head. “I know what this war is now.”

Bucky scans the perimeter again while he swallows down Morita’s words. He shifts, limbs growing numb and falling asleep. “Hindsight is the best insight to foresight.”

“Who said that?”

“It’s an Irish proverb.”

Morita’s lip quirks up. “You Irish?”

Bucky matches his smile and then thinks of Steve, and it grows a little, out of his control with the warmth that spreads through his chest.

“No, but your girl is,” Morita assesses.

Bucky blinks. “Pardon?”

“I know that look. You’ve got a dame waiting on you at home, don’t you?”

Bucky’s face hardens. He focuses his attention back on the tree line.

“Hey, don’t clam up on me. The guys and I took bets. Sometimes we see you writing letters but you never send them off, so we thought maybe she’d passed or something. That’s why no one wanted to ask.”

“Should’ve kept it that way.”

Morita studies him. “Tell me about her?”

“I—” Bucky falters, the protest withering up in his throat like grass in winter. Maybe this will be better. Maybe this will make it easier. “Spitfire. That’s… she’s a spitfire.”

“So she’s not dead?”

“No.”

“But she’s not yours anymore?”

Bucky grits his teeth. “Never was.”

Morita whistles low as he pulls out a small silver flask full of who knows what. “Damn. What else?”

“She uh… she goes looking for trouble, you know? She can be real dumb about it, about picking fights, ’cuz she’s so small but she still stands up to anyone no matter how big they are. Drives me fucking crazy, let me tell you. And—” Bucky chokes on his words. “She’s a fucking artist. I’ve never met anyone who can draw that well.”

Morita starts to grin. “Didn’t know you were such a softie, Barnes.”

“I’m not.”

Morita raises an eyebrow and his flask. “Well, here’s hoping she comes to her senses and marries you the day you get back.”

_I fucking wish. _

. 

_In the brief interlude between each bang and whimper, when I don’t know if I’m dead or alive or not, I swear to myself if I were home right now I would just tell you. What is fear, after all, in the face of the blood torn shadowed valley I walk through? If you were right in front of me when time stops and the world does too, I’d have no trouble saying it at all. There are no better fitting last words than I love you, especially for a smitten motherfucker like me._

_But I don’t deserve you. I never will, and that’s okay. I’ve made my peace with the fact that can’t have you, not the way I want you (and god, do I want you). _

_They say everyone’s got another half out there somewhere, like all our souls are split in two. _

_I don’t think it’s like that. I think you’ve got mine and I’ve got yours, and I promise I’ll look after it good while I’m here, just so long as you do the same for me. _

_I’ll carry you around right next to my heart and keep you warm as long as it’s still beating. I don’t care how many times I end up frozen and stiff; if they want you they will have to pry you from the cage of my ribs where you are buried inside, and if they kill me, let me die. I’ll eat the devil for breakfast and pull you down into hell with me where we can finally be warm. We can live an infinite summer, and the world can keep its cold hard truths and rules and winters. I’ve got enough love to last us lifetimes. Maybe one day I won’t be such a chickenshit and I’ll just tell you. _

  
.

They’re dropping bombs and the ground is rattling, ripping apart at the seams like Satan wants to swallow them up whole.

Bucky is running, Bucky is on his knees in the moors with his rifle in hand pumping some Kraut’s guts full of lead, Bucky is yelling to his men to fall back as the sky turns magmatic; Bucky can’t breathe but he does anyway; Bucky can’t see but he does anyway; Bucky can’t feel but he feels everything anyway.

Another quake brings him to his knees in the grass. From his right there is a long and low moan.

Bucky turns, quick and cautious like a stag at the sound of gunfire, but it’s a friendly. A dying one at that: Bucky can see the way his head lolls in the half light. He can see the way his eyes have dimmed.

“Help,” he wheezes. “H-Help me…”

Stumbling over, Bucky gropes to find dog tags. LAWSON, JOHNNY H. Strung along with them is a beaded rosary, the crucifix of gilded metal that winks when it catches the light.

“You Catholic, Johnny?”

The kid nods, and he really is just a green boy: maybe eighteen, but probably younger, probably he lied just to come here, just to fucking die. He’s a godamn baby, can’t even grow a beard yet by the looks of it, and here he is lying on his back in a swamp with Bucky holding half of his body in his hands, red and hot and slick like a newborn.

He quickly realises there’s really nothing he can do. But maybe he can make it a little easier.

“I don’t know a lotta Catholic prayers,” Bucky confesses. “My Ma raised me Christian like her father did for her, but the one—Hail Mary—”

“Hail Mary,” Johnny repeats, latching onto the words, blood on his lips, “f-full of grace, The Lord is with thee—”

Bucky has heard it a thousand times or more. That’s what you get growing up across the street from a Catholic church. He’d heard the little boys singing their choir songs, seen the light spill through the stained glass arch above the doors and dapple the ground in a thousand colours; he’d heard Father Michaels give his sermons and he’d listened to all the whispered prayers made with every votive candle lit. Bucky would sweep the church steps every Sunday night because the Father was kind enough to give him a nickel for it even though he didn’t follow the faith.

So he chants along, “Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of the womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

Johnny grabs Bucky’s hand. His head tilts up so he can look at Bucky better and in his eyes, he sees reflected the light of the fires, the gold of the flames. “Amen,” he chokes.

“Amen,” Bucky echoes.

Johnny dies then, soft like, his head falling back against the mud and his guts in Bucky’s useless fucking hands.

Bucky doesn’t know what to do next. He just knows they’re sweat in his eyes and it stings, and his body aches like hell, and so he reaches out to shut Johnny’s eyelids and leaves red stains on the skin there.

He braces his hands on his knees and tries real hard not to think about it. He can’t fucking thing about it because then he’ll start asking himself questions like what is all this for? What the _fuck_ did Johnny just die for?

Bucky grabs his rifle and uses it to push himself to his feet. He walks toward his company and later he writes, hands eerily still as the words spill dark against the page of his notebook. There’s hardly any light to see by but it doesn’t matter: this shit’s for the birds anyway.

When he sleeps, he dreams of nothing.

.

_ This is my purgatory. I’ve been dead for a long time, been dead since I got on that boat and left you behind. Death’s got his black hands wrapped around the neck of my corpse and he’s dragged me down to hell with him, and here I am with all the damned. This place burns you, sweetheart. All the way to the roots of my heart I’m on fire. I keep waiting for the day it’ll stop but more and more I don’t think it ever will. _

.

“He needs to keep quiet,” Morita hisses through the dark.

Bucky stands above him and Falsworth. Between them all is the dying private on the ground. He’d been part of their infantry for weeks now, but he hadn’t exactly been the talking type.

Now he won’t shut the fuck up.

Anxiously Bucky’s eyes flit to the windows along the left church wall. There are eleven of them. Five are shuttered and the rest are half open, missing panes, nursing broken glass; gaping mouths that Private Montague is screaming through.

“I need more supplies,” Morita complains.

Bucky shakes his head. “Just do what you can with what you have.”

Morita wipes the sweat from his brow and as a result, smears blood there. Bucky feels sick at the sight. He looks away. “I’m gonna watch the fence. Jones, take point at the front doors. Dugan, you take the rear exit.”

Bucky stuffs his cheek with chewing tobacco and perches by the partially bulwarked window, the neck of his rifle resting against the sill.

It’s four minutes until he’s squeezing the trigger.

“How many?” Morita asks.

“One that I saw,” Bucky replies. “There’ll be more unless you keep him quiet.”

Montague cries out like just to prove Bucky’s point and Morita curses a blue streak. Bucky doesn’t have to look over to know that while Jim might be scared and utterly out of his depth, his hands are steady.

“You know,” he can hear Falsworth saying, “you could use my laces for the leg.”

So it’s that bad. Bucky grits his teeth. He could tell them to stop. _Should_ tell them to stop, really, because they’re fifty miles from civilisation and if Morita amputates that leg it’ll only end up infected. They’ll just end up killing Montague slow.

Bucky loses two more bullets. The back of his neck prickles. “They’re gonna try and circle around us,” he says, though he can’t explain _how_ he knows it. Sometimes he thinks maybe he was just born for this, for war. He has a sixth sense for death.

“Just a minute,” Morita says.

“You can have a minute, but it’ll be your last one.”

Morita looks up and their eyes meet across the dust-covered floorboards. “Barnes…”

“He’s gone, Jim,” Bucky says. “Look at him.”

Morita looks. He sees Montague’s white face and blank eyes and his shoulders drop. “_Fuck_,” he says, “dammit—”

Bucky fires again. “Falsworth, check the east side.”

Monty isn’t as good of a shot, but he can see well enough to take out whatever’s coming at them from that end.

An eerie silence falls over the company as they wait. The grass shifts in the wind and heavy, grey clouds creep slowly across the sky.

Time passes.

“What’s the count?” Dum Dum asks.

“You left your post, soldier.”

“I barred the door with a pew,” the private replies. “So what’s your number?”

“Five. Falsworth has three.”

“You think any more will come?”

Bucky shakes his head. It’s been twenty minutes since he’s shot jack shit. “They were probably just stragglers. Pew idea ain’t bad. Think we could break them up and board the windows?”

They do it quickly. The moon hasn’t yet hit its peak when Bucky reclines on the steps up to the altar, chewing on the dried meat they’ve been parcelling up for the last five days. It doesn’t have taste and leaves him thirsty.

“You got a sermon?” asks Dum Dum.

Bucky snorts. “I’m not one for preaching.”

“Come on,” Jones presses. “You’re always writing in that notebook, aren’t you?”

“Believe me, I ain’t writing about Jesus.”

“So what _are_ you writing about?”

He thinks. Chews. Thinks some more.

“An angel.”

“Well, ain’t that cute,” Jones teases, “Barnes has a sweetheart.”

And Bucky feels like a fucking animal, sitting on sacred steps sucking his fingers dry of salt, covered in the paint of battle, half in darkness and half in candlelight. He’s not the kind of guy who has a sweetheart, who makes it through. “I don’t have anybody. Shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”

“Not without a bedtime story.”

“Are you serious?”

“As dead as Montague.”

Morita looks up sharply at that. Then he shucks his muddy boot and throws it right at Jones, who laughs and ducks away from it. “Relax, Apollo.”

“Fuck you,” Morita snaps.

He’s perched by Montague’s body in vigil. There’s a threadbare blanket draped over the kid’s face, but Bucky can see thin crimson trails along the floorboards from where they had dragged him inside and paused in the middle of the church.

He sighs.

Stands and drifts over to the pulpit.

“I know three things about Montague: one, he was only twenty, two: his father’s been dead for seven years, and three: his first name was Reginald, but his folks called him Reggie. I definitely didn’t know him well enough to be standing up here talking about him, but then again, I bet Jesus thinks the same shit every day looking down on preachers.” They laugh, and surprisingly Morita’s is the loudest. “Montague’s got a family back home. A Ma, maybe a couple of siblings or a sweetheart of his own. I don’t know. But in a few days or a few weeks they’re gonna have two strangers standing on their doorstep ready to tell them that… that Reggie’s dead. And they won’t tell them about how in his last moments he was shaking and crying and begging for his Father—they always leave out the specifics when they talk about how brave we are when we die, don’t they?”

Bucky swallows back bile. He grips the edges of the pulpit harder. “They’ll want a reason. His family. They’ll sit around maybe, and wonder why it was him and not some other kid. Not one of us. And I can’t blame them for that, because I’m standing here right now asking myself the same damn question and I couldn’t give you a good answer if you stuck me like a pig and read my entrails for one. But I know this: I know that kid right there deserves some damn respect. Tomorrow morning we’ll bury him, and we’ll give him some good last words, okay?”

Falsworth claps first, slow, and then Jones joins in, and then the others follow after and Bucky rolls his eyes. “Shut the fuck up, you’ll wake the Nazis.”

.

_My Ma came to France the 90s. She told me it was a romantic place; said every breath tasted sweet on the tongue and they all drank champagne like it was water._

_I think she must have stayed someplace nicer than where I am, but fuck, anywhere that’s warm could be something out of a goddamn Keats poem. Makes me think of that one: ‘And in icy silence of the tomb, so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights.’_

_It’s probably sacrilege to call a church a tomb, but that’s what it feels like—like the air is frozen and it’s gonna choke us all pretty soon, cover our hearts in frost until stop beating. What’s worse is even the dreams, the good ones, they don’t help anymore. They just leave me colder when I wake up._

_Jim is snoring. The guys used to try tricks to get him to stop; they’d put a rock under his head or a twig in one nostril, you know? These days they don’t bother, I guess because when you’ve seen so many dead bodies, it’s nice to know the one lying beside you ain’t a stiff one. God bless the future Mrs. Morita though, Jesus fuck._

_My wrist is cramping. These days I write three letters: one for Ma, one for you, and one to tell you all the things I can’t say. Maybe that’s why I’m seeing things rosy right now: I can’t seem to get you out of my head._

_When we were nine years old Tommy Burnett raised his hand and asked why two boys couldn’t get married and Sister Margret got so fucking red I thought she might fucking choke to death. She slapped him across the knuckles with a ruler and that was the first and only time I ever heard the question asked outside of my own head._

_They say the way that I love you is a sin._

_But here I am sitting here in the house of God wrapped in a dead man’s jacket, wearing a dead man’s boots, covered in mud and shit and who knows what else; blood under my nails, a trail of dead Krauts in my wake, and why is love to be my damnation? My worst sins are painted all over my body, Stevie, but your name is on my heart._

_I don’t care if it makes me a sinner, I’m gonna keep loving you until I’m six feet under and pushing up daisies for you to sneeze over, you allergic fuck, because I think that love I’m carrying around is the only pure thing I’ve ever felt._

_I just wonder, is all. If my Ma could hear this she’d get down on her knees and start to weep, and then she’d pray for my soul to be saved. And fuck, maybe she should. I could use a little salvation._

_See the thing about it is, with every man I kill, every time I see them drop down like a marionette with cut strings and fall limp on the ground, I think maybe this is it. Maybe the whole point of all of this is for those moments; hot cheeks and hands in hands and all the other shit that comes along with loving someone. Maybe that’s our salvation. And who cares if I find it with you? If it’s not something I should feel, then why do I? Why won’t it go the fuck away?_

_Sometimes I wish it would. Maybe it would make me feel lighter._

_Other times, I remember it’s the only thing that makes me feel light at all._

_Dum Dum says if I don’t shut the lantern he’s gonna use my ass to put it out. Guess this is goodbye for now. _

.

HERE ENGRAVED ARE THE

LAST WORDS OF

PVT. REGGIE MONTAGUE:

“SUCK MY DICK, HITLER.”

.

Steve can still hear the anthem in his head; the swelling crescendo, the bashing symbols, the cheers of the crowd. He sighs as he plucks a piece of confetti from his hair and shoulders his way into the hotel room the USO officers set up for him in the city.

Steve goes to bed every night with a back aching for all of the wrong reasons. His cheeks hurt from plastering smiles across his face all day. His head aches from wearing the damn helmet for so long.

But his room is blissfully quiet. Steve flicks on the light and stares at the bed for a long moment, feeling the strangest sense of loss.

He’s been sleeping on his own for months, ever since Buck enlisted.

It’s nothing new, but for some reason the cold left side feels especially poignant tonight.

Steve kicks off his shoes, dresses down, and washes off. He turns on the wireless and closes his eyes to the music. 

“_I’ll be seeing you… in all the old familiar places…_”

He doesn’t rightly know why his chest throbs with the words. He just knows that been two months since he’s heard from Bucky, and he’s read the words in his last letter so many times he could recite them by heart.

Steve pulls out his sketchbook and lets his hand move as his mind drifts. Before he knows it there are sprawling sketches with deeply etched lines: Bucky behind a thin veil of cigarette smoke, mouth turned up at the corner; Bucky sprawled across his back in Central Park during the days where the heat struck so badly, half their borough slept out overnight rather than bake to death in their apartments.

Bucky leaning against the garage wall in a pair of oil-stained overalls, Bucky with his head thrown back in laughter, _Bucky, Bucky, Bucky. _

Steve stares at the page for a long time and feels his throat constrict. He feels like he just carved his own heart out and painted with its blood ink.

Gingerly, he tears the page out and writes across the back: _I did a stupid thing. I’ll tell you about it next time I see you. _

. 

_I got your drawing. Makes me wish I could draw too. _ _I wish I could draw you the way I see you in my head: I wish I could use it as an excuse to trace your jaw, to run my fingers through your hair because I have to get the length right._

_I wish you were plastered across the roof of this barn because you’re more beautiful than the Sistine Chapel—but fuck, Michelangelo could paint a portrait of you and it wouldn’t compare to the real goddamn thing._

_I need the real goddamn thing. I need you so badly._

.

“Sei still!” hisses a figure in the dark. They shift around him, grab him, their grip hard like iron shackles. Bucky is hauled to his feet and the pain that rips through him yanks another scream from his throat.

“Halt ihn fest,” the same voice snaps, and then more hands are touching him. The contact sears his skin even through the thin rags he’s wearing. “Amerikanischer_ bastard._”

Bucky spits.

It’s blind but he doesn’t miss. The Nazi grunts, then he socks Bucky in the stomach so hard he sees spots. “_Fuck_.”

“Fick _dich_,” the German retorts. “Komm schon, lass uns gehen.”

Bucky is dragged, kicking and thrashing, down a hallway that’s equally as dark as the room they’d been holding him in. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he was brought here, but it feels like decades. He can’t remember the last time he saw the sun.

“Hier drin.”

Bucky finally gets a good look at the faces of his captors. There’s nothing remarkable about them; they are pale and pallid, and their eyes are grey and angry. They look like their only fuel is hate. He figures, all things considered, he probably doesn’t look much better.

Bucky is shoved in the direction of a metal table. There are leather straps about where his wrists and ankles will fall.

“What? Oh, no, you’ve gotta be shitting me. You think you’re putting me on _that?_”

“Warum redet er immer noch?” demands the guard holding him in place. “Jemand muss ihn knebeln!”

Bucky doesn’t know all that much German, but he’s picked up bits and pieces here and there. One sticks out now. “Did you—did he say _gag?_”

Instead of an answer he gets hit in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. His vision whites out and the next he knows, he’s on all fours, hands braced flat against the freezing concrete floor.

They kick him over and over and over, until he’s sure his stomach has been painted black and blue, until he can’t breathe without it hurting.

Bucky screams when they haul him from the ground to the table. He tries to rip his arms away but they slam them back down. He hasn’t eaten much more than stale bread in weeks. He’s weakened and it’s futile but he still won’t stop.

“Was für ein stures Arschloch,” one of the Germans mutters, pulling the strap tight around Bucky’s wrist.

Then he rams his pistol against Bucky’s stomach and wind is knocked out of him. There is a bright light hanging over his head and it’s blinding him. He’s so fucking cold and there’s no bottom to his fear and his body has no roots and he’s floating away, hovering over himself like an aerial bystander.

The door opens. A man in a lab coat strides in. He snaps to the soldiers in German and Bucky doesn’t understand, doesn’t _want_ to understand.

“Ist er bereit?”

“Jawohl,” replies one of them.

The man, a doctor probably, nods. He reaches for an object resting on a nearby tray. His fingers hover before they close around the syringe.

“This will hurt,” the doctor tells Bucky.

And then Bucky goes straight to Hell.

He’d thought for so long he was already in it, but then his body is on fire, the heat is in his bones and it ignites the cording of his muscles and it melts his brain and his skin must be charred and black, it _must_, and his throat burns too but that’s from the screaming, and he wants it to stop, he wants it to end, he _needs_ it to end, he needs—

(steve)

Bucky screams, chokes on his own vomit, and passes out.

  
.

[written on a piece of scrap paper in a damp prison cell in Azzano]: 

_Stevie._

_That’s what the guards told me I said in my sleep last night. They made fun of me for it, for saying your name. I remember the dream: it was me and you sitting on the edge of the docks with our slacks rolled up to the knee, and it was night, and I pushed you in and I know if it had been for real you woulda cursed a blue streak and yanked me down with you into the water, but in the dream you just laughed. The fabric of your shirt stuck to your chest and I could see all your ribs through it and it scared me just like it does when I’m awake._

_I don’t like to think of you huddled up in our apartment with no heat and a pack of sardines for your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, three in one._

_I want you whole and everlasting but fuck, sweetheart, if you’re gonna be a shadow I’ll live in your dark my whole goddamn life. If means forever with you, I’ll do it._

_Anyway, you laughed, and then I was with you and God it felt so real. The water was cold and we didn’t sink, we just floated, and your name was like honey on my lips, gold and soft. I wonder if you dreamed it, too._

_I’ll hold onto that. It’s all I have left._

_A POST SCRIPT FOR GOD:_

_I know you and I aren’t in good graces at the moment, but if I could just have one thing, one mercy, it’d be to make it through this. I just want to hold him again, God. I just wanna feel my hands on his body, I wanna kiss him until I’m drunk on it and love him until I’m old and gone. _

_He’s only a memory in my head, but damn it all to hell if he isn’t the sweetest one._

.

He is Lazarus, dead and risen.

Bucky opens his eyes and sees blue, and he’s certain it’s really over. He reaches up and his fingers curl around something solid—a wool coat, the kind Americans wear.

“It’s me,” says the soldier, “it’s Steve.”

Those are the words that come out of his mouth, but Bucky hears, _I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. _

The words repeat over and over in his head. “Steve,” he repeats, and smiles so big. He’s so happy he forgets to be angry because it’s _Steve_. Steve is here and he’s gonna save him. 

Bucky is so deliriously overjoyed. Steve, his guardian angel. Steve, the man that carries Bucky’s mortal soul. Bucky can’t die without him just like he can’t _live _without him. Of course he’s here. Of course, of _course_. 

“_Steve_,” he repeats, just to taste his name on his tongue again.

“Come on,” Steve says quickly, and his hands are rough and calloused, warm and real when he touches Bucky to haul him to his feet. “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky throws back, because the way he remembers it, he used to crouch down just to fuck with Steve and now they’re standing eye to eye. 

Confused, Bucky steps back but stumbles. Steve grabs him and starts to walk while half carrying Bucky along the way, and it’s the opposite of how it should be but he’s not about to complain. He can feel the bruises blooming, the broken bones creaking. 

“What _happened_ to you?”

“I joined the army.”

“Did it hurt?” It’s all he can think about: Steve strapped down to some table like he was, screaming and sobbing and dying.

“A little.”

Bucky swallows bile. “Is it permanent?”

“So far.”

Steve won’t stop and so Bucky reaches for him. He yanks at the hem of his jacket. Steve halts with an almost surprised expression on his face like he hadn’t realised how fast he was going. “You thought I was dead,” Bucky presses, “did you cry?”

Steve’s eyes darken. He grabs Bucky’s forearm, the one they burned. His words are hard but the touch is gentle, “We need to get out of here, Buck.”

That’s all the answer Bucky needs to know that Steve fucking cried. 

. 

_You’re one dumb piece of shit, you know that? You fucking asshole. You’re walking around here two feet taller than you should be and what’s that gonna get you, huh? You’re a fucking elephant out here. You’re bigger than a fucking tank._

_Biggest fucking target for a thousand miles, and what for? Why couldn’t you have just stayed at home? Why’d you have to go and make it so much easier for the bad guys to kill you? I wanted you safe._

_I wanted you._

_Fuck, Steve, I want you like this. I feel bad about it and goddamn if I wouldn’t like to break my fist punching your lights out for being such a motherfucking idiot. I want to push you against walls and get in your face and look you right in your pretty blue eyes without having to tilt my head down. I want you. I want you so bad it hurts. Why’d you have to come here and make it so much harder?_

_I hate you for making me love you so bad._

.

The thirty miles back to Italy give Bucky good time stew in his anger.

He finds himself watching Steve constantly. The fucking idiot seems so happy to be here it’s disgusting. 

He feels like he can’t even recognise him anymore. The guy he once knew is in there somewhere, sure: in the way Steve still moves his hands when he talks and purses his lips when he’s pissed off and smirks real crooked and sharp. 

Bucky tries hard not to think about it. He tries writing instead but he forces the pencil against the page of his notebook and the tip breaks right off. 

And what’s the point anyway? There is no amount of words to express how fucking furious he is at Steve for being the most stubborn shit alive. More than that Bucky is pissed at every damn divinity above for devising a fate so cruel that they should stand side by side in a land so harrowed and unrelentingly cold.

  
“So you’re angry at me?”

Bucky jumps and fumbles with the clasp of his trousers. He glares at Steve over his shoulder. “Jesus H. Christ, can’t a guy relieve himself in peace?”

Steve shrugs. He’s leaning against a tree with his enormous arms folded over his enormous chest. “I don’t know, can he?”

Bucky, now decent, turns. He can’t quite meet Steve’s eyes. “What do you want?”

“I thought you…” Steve falters, but Bucky knows what he was gonna say. He was gonna say, _I thought you’d be happy to see me. _

Then Steve’s face clouds over. That means the idiot’s decided to get pissed off right back. 

“I saved your life.”

“You did,” Bucky agrees.

“_But?_”

Like water coming to a rolling boil, Bucky bursts. “You shouldn’t be here! God, what the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing, huh? You don’t know what this place is, Steve! You have no fucking idea! What are you even here for, anyway? You think you’ve got something to prove by dying?!”

He chokes himself off, breathing ragged in the same the way Steve’s used to get when he was nursing a bought of pneumonia.

“Believe it or not,” Steve counters, “I’m not that easy to kill.” 

Bucky starts to laugh.

He laughs through the tears blurring his vision and through the heat of the anger because it’s just so fucking ridiculous. Steve isn’t supposed to be here and it feels like a fever dream, like Bucky’s looking into a funhouse mirror where everything is twisted; Steve holding him up, Steve, built like a tank.

“Buck.” Steve leans over his doubled-up form, “hey, calm down.”

“Calm_ down?_” Bucky rips himself out of Steve’s grip and stumbles away. “_Fuck you,_ Steve.”

Steve’s eyes are wide and Bucky can finally see them, big and blue, just the way they were before. It’s him in there, in that too-tall body, and that scares Bucky so bad he starts to shake.

Steve edges closer like he’s creeping up on a skittish cat. “Buck, I know you’re pissed off, and I get it—”

“No, you don’t.”

He was supposed to be safe. He was supposed to be thousands of miles away from all of this and he were supposed to be okay and he were supposed to live, but now just like Bucky he’s been damned, just like him he’s in hell.

Steve’s hand closes around his shoulder and Bucky remembers what else he’d written in his tattered notebook. He’d said they’d brave hell together and make it their own, that they could rule over all the lost souls and finally feel their bones thaw.

“You don’t look so good.”

“M’fine.”

Steve shakes his head. “We should get you back to the tent.”

“I don’t need to—” Bucky hisses as he straightens his spine. “I’m fine, I’m serious.”

“You should really rest.”

Bucky swallows bile. “This is some backward ass shit, you know that, Rogers? What happened to me looking out for you? And how am I supposed to do that now when you’re so fucking big you could strangle a damn rhino, huh?”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Is it out of your system yet?”

“No,” Bucky snaps. Just to be a petty little shit he keeps going, poking a finger right at the star on Steve’s chest; “You could’ve gotten yourself killed saving my ass and you keep walking around here all chipper like it’s a goddamn amusement park. You can’t do that. Too many people have died, understand? It’s… it’s real bad here, Steve.”

His voice breaks and he steps back before he can give into the terrifying urge to just fall against Steve, to be held by him, _finally_. He can’t remember the last time anyone did that for him. He’s not sure if anyone ever has.

But there are dozens of men relying on him. He can’t just fall apart. 

Steve’s face is softer now. “I’m sorry, Buck.”

“Yeah, well. You just shouldn’t be here, is all.”

“That might’ve been true before, but not now.”

Bucky looks him up and down. Steve is a wall of solid rock. “Guess you’re right.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth tugs up and just like that, like a drowning man adjusting to a shift in tide, Bucky can breathe again. Because that’s his Steve; these eyes, that smile. There’s just a whole lot more of him now, and what the hell could be wrong with that?

“Will you let me help you?”

Bucky waves him off. He rights himself and trudges past Steve toward camp. “I can manage fine.”

“You’re sure?” 

  
Even with Bucky’s answering glare Steve still walks in stride beside him, and once or twice their shoulders brush, and maybe their arms, and maybe it makes Bucky’s cheeks streak but that’s no one’s business except his own.

“Jerk,” he mumbles.

Steve laughs. “Punk.”

  
. 

_There’s nothing like seeing the sun rise again after weeks in a Nazi prison camp._

_I’m no artist, but if I could paint I’d have to mix a thousand colours just to get it right. There’s this strip of blue on the horizon I can just see and to me it’s your eyes. I know that shade blind. You’re in the sky, aren’t you? And you’re here too. You’re with the boys under the lean-to, and you shouldn’t be. I hate it more than I have ever hated anything._

_And God help me, I love it too._

_I really thought I was gonna die. I still do, and then I think I can’t, because if I die who the fuck is gonna watch out for you?_

_Guess it don’t matter anymore. You don’t need me._

_I don’t know how to adjust to the new world order. I just know that you’re the sky looking down on me and I’m the ground. You know how it goes in the stories: Oranus and his girl, how they were formed apart but made something out of the way they came together; the smiles of Heaven produce the flowers of the Earth, and by god, I’d bloom like a fucking rose if you wrapped me up inside yourself just once._

_If I die, I don’t want it to be years down the line with you still broken up about me. I want you to live, by Christ, I want you to breathe. I have wanted that and only that since the night I knelt by your beside and clasped my hands and whispered to God, begged Him, let this dumb fucking idiot make it to dawn because he loves to watch the sun come up?_

_For hours I watched the way your chest kept caving in like you’d been hit, like it hurt so bad, and I got scared because they tell you if an animal is dying, put it out of its misery. But Stevie, shit, I couldn’t ever. Not with you._

_And I guess what I’m trying to say is, if I can’t let you go, how can I expect you to do the same with me?_

.

“You don’t look to be having a very good time, soldier.”

Bucky falls back into himself at the sound of a voice raised over the music. The woman he’d danced the lindy hop with, Rosetta, is smiling up at him with red stained lips.

It’s funny, so far no matter how hard Bucky’s looked he can’t find a flaw in her. The curls that frame her face are a pale yellow and still hold their shape even as she moves across the dancefloor, trading partners the way kids shuffle through friends. She still hasn’t broken a sweat, at least not that he can tell, and any other time maybe he’d take up that challenge.

But he just… doesn’t want to.

There is nothing overtly the matter with Rosetta Lee, and in the same instant, everything about her is the matter.

“Long week is all,” Bucky tells her, hoping she’ll take it for what it is and find some other poor guy to pester.

But Rosetta just smiles wider and leans in more, almost conspiratorially, “You’re an incredibly talented dancer, did you know?”

“Of course I know.” 

It comes out too harsh and she leans back with a flinch. He finally rips his eyes away from the corner booth in the hall. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Like I said, it’s been a real long week.”

To her credit Rosetta takes it in stride. Her smile cuts a half moon into her cheek. “How about fresh air?”

Bucky hardly considers it before he’s offering her his arm. 

Outside the streets are damp and speckled with snow. It drifts down in a lazy kind of way, flakes of white against a pitch black sky. Rosetta tilts her chin up and smiles wider. “God, I love this time of year.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you?”

“Well, my… my Ma used to get sort of sick around the winter time,” Bucky confesses, though he couldn’t say why. “Not physically, I mean. It was more… in her head.”

He’d used to resent her for it. For the longest time he hadn’t even realised he was doing it, but waking up in the freezing cold mornings waiting for the boiler to kick on, shuffling through the grey, subfusc studio they all shared together—him and his mother and all the kids; braiding Becca’s hair, waiting for Ma to wake up, making breakfast, waiting for Ma to wake up, washing the babies, waiting for Ma to wake up…

Now he’s strolling down the empty London street with a pretty girl at his side he can’t quite look at, and he thinks he understands.

That fog in the brain, the one making everything feel frigid, the one making all his thoughts cloud into a storm. He gets it now.

“I’m so sorry,” Rosetta says, and he knows she means it but damn it, every word drips with an Oxford accent and she sounds too much like Carter. 

Carter who’d been cozying up to Steve in that damn booth, all soft in the candlelight. Steve had been smiling and laughing and it shouldn’t have made Bucky feel sick to his stomach.  
  


But here he is anyway. 

He glances at Rosetta. She’s a real stunner, could probably blow right through Hollywood and make a pretty penny doing it, he thinks.

“Dance with me?”

There’s the smile again. It’s like looking at DaVinci’s Mona Lisa; he’s pretty sure it’s supposed to make him feel something, but it just won’t. Used to be a girl like her smiled at a guy like him and he’d be half dead with his knees shaking and his heart racing.

But Bucky can’t bring himself to care about anyone other than the dumb asshole in that dance hall, the one with the quiet smile and the soft laugh, the one that Bucky craves like a man dying of thirst.

Rosetta accepts his hand. They dance in the empty street and her hair tickles his cheek, or maybe it’s the snow, or maybe the tear.

“Are you crying, darling?”

Bucky feels her fingers brush his skin, surprisingly calloused for a dame who looks like she’s made of porcelain.

“It’s a sad song,” he whispers.

“Moonlight Serenade,” she names. “It was my father’s favourite.”

Bucky’s forehead falls against her own and he just breathes, and the air cuts his lungs but not as much as the pain does. “I miss my home,” he says, “I miss my heart, Rosie. I gave it away and I don’t know how to get it back.”

“Perhaps it got lost in the post?” she suggests, and they both laugh in a way that sounds more like crying.

Her fingers touch his chin where another tear hangs precariously. “Was it the woman you were watching?”

Bucky can’t quite bring himself to lie. He’s been doing it for so long, all his life really, and he’s tired all the way to his bones.

“Wasn’t the woman.”

Rosetta is silent for a long moment, and so still they sway ever-gently like those chimes his mother used to hang for the wind to make songs from.

“It was the man?”

Bucky doesn’t answer.

“It’s alright,” she presses.

“Is it that obvious?” he asks, sounding smaller than he can ever remember.

Her face is painted with sympathy. “Oh, darling,” she whispers, “it’s written all over you. You’re lucky most of the world is blind to it.”

Bucky hangs his head. “_Fuck_. Why are you—why are you even still _touching_ me—?”

Rosetta pulls back a little, all startled like a faun at gunfire. Her eyes are full of tears but they look more like starlight. “Patrick,” she whispers. “That was the name of the man my father fell in love with.”

Bucky finds, now, that he can’t speak.

“It was years ago now,” she goes on, “and at the time it broke my heart, and I remember my mother cried for… for months, really. She was so horribly upset. I had never seen her that way before. But I just remember thinking, very distinctly, that whatever pain we were feeling together now was a deep wound he had festered for decades. And I know it hurt him as much as it did her.”

The space between them is five inches. It is a chasm. He reaches up to wipe his face. “Did you hate him for it?”

“On the contrary,” she says, “I loved him rather a lot, up until his very last.”

“Why?”

“Because…” she shakes her head. “Because there are two things we can do in life: we can choose to hate, and we can hide, and we can brush the very best and brightest parts of ourselves under the bed and ensure we don’t outshine all the rest—or we can do what’s bravest, and we can love. Regardless of the consequences, regardless of where we end up after we die. Why worry about such things when we have so much life left to live?”

Bucky shakes his head. “You’re a real glass half full kind of gal, aren’t you?”

Rosetta laughs. “I suppose I must be.”

“You gonna tell anyone?”

“That you fancy Captain America?” she asks, and when she says it like that, out loud, breathing all that life into it, Bucky feels his heart stutter. “No, I won’t tell. Just as long as you will afford me the same courtesy regarding my inclinations toward the fairer sex.”

Bucky grins for the first time in what feels like years. “So we really were just wasting each other’s time, weren’t we?”

“I don’t feel that way. Do you?”

Bucky pretends to consider it. “I suppose not.”

They dance for a little while longer. There’s a weight gone from Bucky’s body. He feels strangely light, even with the certainty that she had only shared such personal pieces of herself with him because of the belief that tomorrow or Tuesday or any day after, really, he’ll probably be dead.

When they return to the hall, her friends crowd her, trying to beg off and go someplace quieter.

“Will you be alright?”

“I’ll be just fine,” he tells her, and presses a kiss to her cheek. “Thanks for the dance.”

“Come back someday,” she entertains, “have coffee with me.”

Bucky laughs. “We’ll see, Rosie.”

“Do you know, if you were anyone else I would have long corrected you to call me Rosetta,” she says, and then squints, “but I don’t think you mean it in quite the way that most men do.”

Bucky shrugs. “I just want people to know when I really like ’em, is all.”

Rosetta smiles. “Charmed,” she says, and then strides out into the night.

Bucky has a few more drinks and then follows soon after, veins full of amber fire. He makes it to the hotel the regiment is stationed at for the moment and gets halfway up the stairwell when he remembers that the place had been so blocked up with soldiers they’d been doubling people up.

Steve had volunteered to share, of course. In fact, he’d volunteered Bucky with him.

For a brief moment he entertains the idea of just falling down and sleeping on the stairwell landing because God, hasn’t he suffered enough?

“I’m going the wrong fucking way,” Bucky mutters to himself, because since when is the path to hell a steep ascent up sixteen flights of stairs?

Still he makes it to the room. 16D, all gold and shiny and nailed into the door. Bucky doesn’t knock because he expects to find the room dark or, perhaps worse, empty besides.

It’s not.

Steve is slumped over on the bed, still in uniform. He looks up as Bucky stumbles in.

“You’re drunk.”

“I had a few.”

“I know how many a few is with you, Buck,” Steve insists. “You’re drunk.”

Bucky feels irritation lick at his insides like a whip-slash. “God, you drive me fucking crazy, did you know that? What the hell do you know about any of it?”

Steve stands. He is Vulcan, sculpted stone and metal eyes and red hot coals beneath his cheeks. “Don’t act like I’m not in this with you.”

“You don’t even know what you’re in,” Bucky insists. His anger has provided him with focus and he steps closer. “You don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t know how to fight, and you sure as _fuck _don’t know how to keep yourself alive.”

“Don’t know how to fight? Bucky, I’ve been fighting my whole damn life!”

“This isn’t some back alley brawl—”

“I mean to _live!_” Steve explodes. “I mean I spent every winter afraid my lungs would give out and every breath felt like it could’ve been my last! Every fucking illness, every asthma attack—I’ve been trying to stay alive for a lot longer than you’re giving me credit for, here, Buck.”

Bucky shakes his head. “That’s not the same.”

“_Not the same—?!_”

“No, it’s not the same! Back home we had hospitals, we had doctors! Here we have a roll of gauze and a pair of pliers to pull the bullet out with! You don’t get second chances here, and I can’t watch over us both!”

Steve shakes his head. He is furious, smouldering with frustration. “I don’t need you to watch over me.”

“Don’t be stupid, of course you do.”

“I never did.”

“Oh, fuck that,” Bucky snaps, throwing his cock-eyed hat off. “You think you’d still be standing here right now if I hadn’t been looking out for you all these years? You think you would’ve made it through those winters if I hadn’t—”

_If I hadn’t bled for you, if I hadn’t sold my soul to the devil for you, god, I’d do it all again you stupid motherfucking asshole punk—_

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t need you bending over backwards for me. I don’t want you bent over backwards. I can handle myself.”

Bucky stumbles at the phrasing and the image it brings to his mind, the fire it sparks in the hellscape of his stomach. “Fuck that.”

“Fuck what?”

“Fuck you thinking I could ever care more about myself than I care about you.”

He’s drunk. He knows that’s what Steve’s thinking, but it doesn’t change the fact that something ignites in his eyes and Bucky’s breath hitches.

“I don’t need this.”

“Need what?”

“Your protection!” Steve snaps, hands flying to furiously rip himself out of his uniform coat like it’s stifling him. “I mean Jesus, Bucky, look what they did to me!”

“I see that,” Bucky snaps. “You’re a fuckin’ house now, congratulations.”

Steve shakes his head. “I’m just saying if you die for me, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Excuse me while I tremble in fear,” Bucky throws back, pulling his own jacket off with much less grace. Immediately he feels infinitely cooler; he hadn’t realised how much of a furnace his body had become. “You know something? You got a lot of nerve coming out here like this and not telling me first. What, like you thought I’d be happy about it?”

“Yeah, well, excuse me for thinking I’d still have a friend waiting for me.”

Bucky winces. He tries not to let how deep the cut it show, but it’s a futile effort. Steve is already stuttering out an apology anyway.

“Just shut the fuck up for a second.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“Oh, me? _I’m_ impossible?”

“Yeah,” Steve reaches to undo his belt buckle and Bucky feels his stomach drop, feels the flames there churn and feels his chest go tight; Steve rips the leather free. “_You_.”

“You don’t know the first fucking thing about impossible, pal.”

“Oh, ‘pal’? What is this, a bar room standoff?”

“Sure feels like it,” Bucky grinds out.

“Yeah, with you half drunk and all,” Steve throws back. He glares. “Who was that dame you were with, anyway?”

“Oh, god, don’t start in on me right now. I’m entitled to a little fun, aren’t I?”

“I’m not saying—”

“I don’t need a goddamn lecture—”

“If you could just _listen_ to me for once—”

“And there’s no need to ask who you were with,” Bucky snipes, and Steve finally shuts up. “Yeah, I saw you two, all cuddled up in the corner. Real cute, Steve. You think she would’ve gone for you before they puffed you up like a blowfish?”

It’s meant to cut and it does. Steve’s eyes darken and he steps close, real close, so Bucky can smell the cherry bourbon on his breath and the ivory soap on his skin. “Leave her out of this.”

“Out of what?” Bucky demands.

Neither of them really know what he means, but they both back up a step like Bucky’s crossed some kind of fine line.

For a minute they just breathe heavily in a thick silence. Steve shakes his head. “Get some sleep. I’m gonna wash off.”

_What if I wanna wash off? _Bucky is tempted to ask, just to be a stubborn shit about things, but he bites it back and stomps over to the bed, flicking the light off and throwing the covers over himself.

For a long time it’s dark. Bucky’s ears perk at the sound of the faucet shutting on and off. He scans the city lights through the wide arching windows and his heart doesn’t settle back into his chest until Steve collapses onto the bed behind him.

Bucky closes his eyes. He keeps his breaths nice and even, and just like always, Steve is fooled into thinking Bucky’s actually asleep.

He feels the bed shift. Once, and then twice.

Steve sighs softly.

“Bucky, are you up?”

Bucky gives him nothing. He doesn’t stir, but rather settles a little more into the black, letting Steve’s voice and words wash over him like a nightly psalm, though the words are dripping with sacrilegious poison.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers. “I’m so sorry. I know I hid this from you, and I know everything feels different, but… I’m still me, and I—I’m always gonna need you. _Always_, I promise.”

Right there and then Bucky Barnes relishes one those words, quietly but fiercely; he carves them into his ribs, along the meat of his heart, feels the vibrations and the hitches in Steve’s breath and memorises the lull of his voice, soft as sin.

A long time later, he will hear them again, he will remember them, and he will wish to God they weren’t true.

. 

_I know what it’s like to stay up late into the night gnawing at your lip, worrying your heart dry. I know about the heavy ache in the chest, the weight of all the miles._

_I know about fatal flaws. I know how dangerous it is to look over my shoulder just to make sure you’re still there, but sweetheart, I just can’t help it. I have to know. I always have to know._

_And I guess I realised today, that’s why you’re always looking over your shoulder when I’m standing right in front of you._

_You’re not looking for me, you’re looking for her._

_And that’s okay. You are my Achilles heel; I waded through the Styx to fight in this war and came out hard, except for that fucking chink on my damn shoulder. You are my weakness and she is yours, and if love is to be our downfall then I say fuck it, let’s love anyway. At least it leaves you warm._

.

“Would you shut your trap, already?”

Monty’s whistling rendition of some song Bucky almost recognises in the way that tickles stops abruptly. He narrows his eyes at Gabe. “Bee in your bonnet, old chap?”

“Fuck you,” Gabe says, and spits into the dirt. Bucky sees Steve tense up ahead but he doesn’t say jack shit, cuz they all know Gabe is only sore about having to take such a long fucking detour around the Waser river. A carrier pigeon had brought the telegram only a little while ago, out of breath and sweating, relaying the orders from Carter in a rush. Said there were reports of enemy troops nosing around the area; maybe even a whole company.

Ever since Gabe’s been hemming and hawing about how his feet ache and he’d been looking forward to a wash off in the water. Plus he lost to Dugan in last night’s poker game, and losing to someone who’s famously bad at it can’t do much for anyone’s ego.

Monty, as it is, just shrugs and goes back to whistling.

“Say, what’s that you’re singing anyway, Falsworth?” asks Morita.

“_Dorsey!_” Bucky snaps his fingers, finally remembering. “_Tangerine_, right?”

Monty nods. “Correct.”

“I know that one,” Morita says, and shakes his head sadly. “My old girl used to like it. One time we danced to it in the kitchen. It was playing soft from this beat up radio her Mother had sent her second-hand for Christmas and—”

“Yeah, that’s real sweet, Jim,” Gabe snipes.

Morita shoves him. “Ah, shut up.”

Only it doesn’t just end right there like Bucky’s expecting it to. Gabe shoves back, hard, and Morita ends up in the dirt. If Bucky’s being honest, Morita might be the most level-headed out of all of them, but he doesn’t ever take a hit standing still. His face twists up and he grabs Gabe’s leg, yanking him out from beneath his own feet. Gabe’s back hits the ground with a splatter. Mud speckles all their canvas trousers.

“Hey, fellas,” Dum Dum says, moving in as they wrestle in the dirt, “break it up, huh? We’ve got places to be.”

Gabe’s nose is broken now and the blood spills red down his mouth and chin. His teeth are stained with it as he grits them, trying to pin Morita down.

Bucky isn’t one for standing idle. He’s had years of experience ripping little idiots off of bigger idiots, so he loops his arms around Gabe’s waist and pulls him off, throwing him down into the muck.

“What the fuck, private?”

Gabe’s chest heaves. He stares at Morita furiously. Bucky leans down and snaps his fingers under Gabe’s nose. “I said, what the _fuck_, private?”

Gabe starts. Immediately his face falls and then he just looks like a little kid, swallowing as it dawns on him how bad he fucked up.

“Relax, Jones, I don’t have a rod,” Bucky says. “You wanna tell me what’s got you so riled up?”

Gabe hangs his head and struggles to sit up. Bucky helps him. He meets Steve’s eyes and says with them: _deal with Morita, _and Steve nods because of course he understands. He joins the rest of the boys as they try to help Morita bandage up.

“Carrier pigeon had another letter on him, just for me,” Gabe says softly, all the fight gone now. “It was three months old.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he swallows. “My Mama’s sick.”

Bucky’s stomach drops. He can’t think of what to say, other than, “Fuck, Gabe, I’m sorry.”

Gabe’s face is all twisted up like he might vomit any second. “Yeah, me too. Worst part is I don’t even know if she’s…” he breathes sharp. “She could already be dead.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” Bucky says. “For all you know she’s right as rain by now.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t wanna get my hopes up.”

Bucky hesitates. “Try not to think about it, huh? I know it’s not easy, but if you’re traipsing through enemy territory worrying about your Ma being in a coffin, you could end up in one too. It ain’t worth it to do that to your folks.”

Gabe nods. He sniffs once and then takes Bucky’s proffered hand, letting him hurl Gabe to his feet. The rest are all waiting on them now and Bucky makes sure to pat both Jones and Morita on the back, and just like that all the tension is gone. They’re pretty lucky, Bucky figures, that Morita’s first instinct in almost every conflict is simply to forgive.

After that they keep trudging through. Steve lags behind to stand next to Bucky, looking grim with his whole body. “You’re good with them,” he says.

And Bucky pretends for a minute that they’re twelve again, that Steve isn’t the taller of the two these days, that they’re just making the long walk home through slushy winter snows; he reaches up and ruffles Steve’s hair and Steve laughs, and the sound makes everything alright and okay again.

“_Tangerine, she is all they say,_” Gabe starts up, soft and timid, “_with mascara’d eye and chapeaux by Dache—_”

Morita cuts in with a grin sharper than the knife strapped to Bucky’s thigh, “_Tangerine with her lips of flame, if the colour keeps, Louis Philippe’s to blame!_”

He throws his arm around Gabe’s shoulder while he sings and then it’s all of them, loud and stupid and together, “_And I’ve seen clothes on Tangerine, where the label says ‘from Macy's Mezzanine’! Yes she’s got the guys in a whirl, but she's only fooling one girl, she’s only fooling Tangerine!_”

. 

_I’m cold, Stevie._

_I keep thinking about when we were kids hiding under your sheets reading comic strips by a sliver of moonlight. I keep thinking about years later: your body pressed against mine, sprawled out on our creaky fucking bed you never stopped grousing about once, and how there was only room for both of us because we were already just one person._

_I can’t feel my goddamn toes anymore. I can’t feel my fingers well enough to write forever, all the things I wanna say. I just want you to at least know this: you light my heart on fire. I keep thinking this love is like Heaven in the middle of Hell, how I’d let you burn me up just to start all over again at the beginning._

.

“You know what the GIs call this?”

“What?”

“An asshole buddy.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “That’s not something I needed to be made aware of.”

Bucky laughs as he flops onto his side, burrowing into the foxhole. By now he’s already covered in so much fucking dirt that a little more doesn’t bother him; and if it makes him warmer, so be it. He hasn’t showered in three months, might as well make the most of it.

Steve is still sitting up, sketchbook open on his lap, graphite pressed gingerly against the paper. Bucky glares for a minute.

“Hey, jackass,” he finally says, sure to keep his voice low, “I’d like to get some shuteye.”

Steve doesn’t stop. “Be my guest.”

“The whole point of this is that you watch my back while I sleep, and I watch yours for you.”

“Well sure, but if I’m sitting up my field of vision is even better.”

Bucky sighs long and hard. “You’re fucking killing me here, Stevie.”

Steve looks up, maybe because it’s been a hot minute or two since Bucky’s actually called him that. Bucky holds his questioning, tentative gaze, just to let him know he has reached the crux of his anger and with every passing day it wanes even more. He can’t really be bothered to be pissed about Steve when he’s so pissed about everything else; spending day after day trudging through shelled, hollowed out villages and stinking moors, the soles of his shitty boots sucking into the muck and getting him soaked from the knee down. They walk all day and sleep all night, or sometimes the other way around, and in-between it all they kill, they raze, they salt.

And to be fair, Steve’s pretty damn good at it.

“You gonna let me sleep, Captain?”

Steve snorts, kicks some dirt in Bucky’s direction, and continues shading.

Bucky wriggles closer. “What the hell are you drawing, anyway?”

Steve instantly tilts the page to prevent Bucky from seeing, even though he can’t catch it from this angle anyway. He props himself up on his elbows and reaches to snag the book away—Steve always pulls this shit with his best drawings; he doesn’t like anyone to see until they’re finished, something about a pair of eyes grazing the paper sharing the secret picture he sees inside his head.

“None of your damn business, punk. Go to sleep.”

“That’s Sarge to you,” Bucky hisses, reaching again for the book.

Steve holds it up, high out of reach and clearly irritated to have been interrupted in the midst of his creative process. “I’m serious, knock it off.”

Steve should know, by now, that telling Bucky to stop only gets him to try harder. His sixth grade English teacher had told him he’d fail out of her class with an attitude like that_,_ but he’d ended up with good marks anyway; the guys at the docks had taken one look at him and laughed, but by the end of the week he was hauling just as many crates as them.

And now, he fumbles for the book. Steve rolls and elbows him in the side, but Bucky just laughs even when Steve’s shushing comes.

They whack each other a few times, wrestling around in the dirt and biting back curses and grunts. It’s a little like that time they both fell into a snowbank in the middle of a fight when they were kids; they hit and kick and still grin the whole way through.

“_Buck_—”

Bucky pins Steve down and wrestles the leather-bound book away. It is the most expensive thing Steve owns. Bucky knows that because Bucky is the one who bought it for him.

“Listen, Buck, it’s not—”

But Bucky doesn’t care what it’s not, he just cares about what it is.

And it’s him. It’s BARNES, JAMES B. 520557058 T42 A, _BUCKY_ scratched into the back—his dog tags, the ones hanging free around his neck right now. It’s Bucky but his hair is in his eyes, eyes that are dark and hold an edge, and the edge of his jaw is sharp, like the sharp quirk to his lip, the lip that’s split and bloody; he is shadowed, dry like a wrung out rag, rough with his own body, gritty around the edges. He looks dangerous. He looks haunted. A filthy mouth and filthy hands and a filthy look, like he wants to do bad things—things mothers pray their sons will never even imagine, things they cross their chests to think about.

“Buck, I—”

“Shut up, would you?”

His thumb brushes the lines, easing them out a little, transplanting black smudges onto his own skin. It’s not enough. He’d rather brand it onto his heart.

“Bucky.”

Bucky rips his gaze away. He is suddenly acutely aware of their positioning; Bucky on Steve, straddling his thigh—it might be dark and it might be wartime, but they can’t stay like this, can’t be seen like this. Bucky knows why and Steve knows why but neither of them want to say why or even breathe life into a hint of it. They will not voice the mere contemplation, they will not acknowledge the possibility.

Bucky rolls off. He is still holding the sketchbook. “You drew me?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, like a little kid in the cabinet fessing up to his first sin. “I did.”

It’s not really a question of _you drew me, _because Steve’s done that before. He’s done it a lot, really. The question is more, _you drew me looking like this? with those hands? with that on your mind? _

Bucky keeps staring. He clears his throat and finally passes it back. “Good lines,” he says.

Steve shrugs. He stares down at the page and for a moment there is a spark of reverence in his eyes, something felt uncontrollably but quickly stifled, and for whatever reason Bucky feels vindicated at the sight of it.

“You… Would you mind if I took it?”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Steve says, carefully closing the book, “I’d rather keep it for myself.”

And Bucky can’t be disappointed, won’t be. In that moment his soul feels conscious and alive in a way that it has never been before; like it has finally found a reason to wake up. It paints half-tones in a deep blue, shifts like a prism to show him how the world could look all lit up; pangs of longing quake his rusted heart and cut the strings he keeps himself up with and he is sure, in that moment, that all it would really take is one touch.

One touch to fall forever.

But then Steve shifts onto his side, and Bucky settles down beside him. It’s almost a mercy.

It’s unspoken that they won’t ever talk about it, and odds are Bucky will never see the damn drawing again in his life, but it’s okay because it’s the sort of thing that stays. This awakening has ripped open wounds he hadn’t even known he had and left them to bleed and fester, but the heat of the blood lets him know he’s alive, the heat of Steve’s back, the heat beneath his cheeks.

He tells himself, lying beside Steve in dirt, that they could bury them like this and he’d die happy. They could mark them for just what they are;

HERE LIES A SINNER AND HIS SAINT.

. 

_I can’t get it out of my head: you standing on that catwalk ready to go out, and for what? You never know when to stop, and fuck, I guess I don’t either. I told you I wouldn’t leave you and I meant that. I would have burned with you, died with you; I would and will suffer all measures of agony in your name, willingly and gratefully, because when I feel the pain I know that I am alive. When I feel it I know that I belong, at least, to you. I love you through the bitter smoke, I love you through the fire; I love you through this life and onto the next, sweetheart. Ashes to ashes._

.

Bucky’s cigarette reads HITLER YOUTH GOES UP IN SMOKE! and when he lights the end, it does just that. Steve watches from the other side of the tent.

There is something captivating about the way that Bucky smokes: how it seems to drain the life right out of him so the filter hangs from his lips and his eyes fall half-lidded and heavy.

It’s raining. For some reason, it’s got Steve thinking about his mother. About how on the day she died Bucky had practically dragged him from her grave and forced him into sweater after sweater to stop the shivering, the chattering, the crying.

(“She deserves better,” Steve can remember insisting.

And Bucky had asked, “Better than what? Don’t tell me you wanna dig a hole and lie down with her?”

The arguments had died in the back of his throat, sour and sick. “I just want her to be okay.”

“She is now,” Bucky had promised, even though he’d known that’s not how Steve had meant it. He’d meant he wanted her back; meant he, like Orpheus, would travel into the depths of the Underworld just to bring her to life again, _and I’m not a stupid schmuck Bucky, I’d follow the rules and do it for real._)

Bucky’d held him when Steve’s throat began to constrict and shot him up with the adrenaline he broke his back to get every month. Steve knows that’s why Bucky was always the one to pick it up from the R/X; it cost more than an arm and a leg, cost dozens of extra nights at the garage, cost aching muscles and brittle bones.

His asthma had always been terrible, especially on days like this, when all the shit packed into the soil sprung up into the air.

Now, it doesn’t bother Steve, and Bucky doesn’t need to smoke his cigarette someplace else. He does it four feet away, a leg stretched out across the space between them.

“I can feel you watching me.”

“I’m not watching you.”

“No?” Bucky’s eyes open all the way. Steve blushes, because he _was_ watching, but not like that.

(_Like what?_)

“You eaten?” Bucky asks.

Steve shrugs. They’d passed around a can of soup earlier, when the fire had still been going. He needs to eat a lot more these days, but it doesn’t feel fair to the other guys. Why should he get special treatment? Why should he take their rations?

Bucky looks him up and down, somewhat scrutinising. Then he stands. “Get up.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Bring that chair.”

“Not until you tell me what you want me going out into the rain for.”

“God,” Bucky gripes, “do you have to be such a stubborn punk?”

Steve shrugs.

Bucky grabs him by the arm and hauls him up. He drags Steve through the trenches. They run through the ground like arteries, pumping mud and feces and filthy water rather than blood. Steve absently notes that his trousers are already soaked trying to wade through.

“Hey, Jim, you got a pair of scissors?”

Morita looks up from his patient, some brown haired kid Steve barely knows. He’s getting his dressings changed, from what Steve can tell. “Just what exactly do I look like to you?”

“A medic who carries scissors in his kit?”

Morita pulls a face. Then he hands the roll of gauze to the kid and rummages through his supplies. He hands Bucky a pair of slightly rusted shears. Bucky is unimpressed. “This is all you’ve got for me?”

“You’re not touching my good ones,” Morita says. “I need to be able to suture without worrying about tetanus. Now please, leave me to my patient.”

Bucky frowns but turns on his heel nonetheless, and Steve follows after him, mostly because he’s just so used to doing it.

“What’s this?” asks Monty, catching up with them after they stride past.

“I’m giving the poor schmuck a haircut.”

“Wait—_what?_ Since when?”

“Since you need one,” Bucky says shrugging. He shoves him down into the chair and Monty laughs.

“I say, I’m going to fetch Dugan and Jones. We can play a hand while you get coiffed.”

“I am _not_ getting coiffed,” Steve snaps. “Bucky would have to actually be _good_ at cutting hair to coif me.”

Bucky laughs. “Please. I’m excellent at it, as I am with all things.”

It’s probably true. Bucky had cut Steve’s hair a lot during the Depression, simply out of necessity seeing as neither of them could afford the barber. Steve tries to think of the last time Bucky cut his hair for him. It would have been after he enlisted, because Bucky had been running errands like a madman in the weeks leading up to him shipping out. He’d given Steve all of his savings, stocked up on as much food and medicine as possible, paid off his debts around town.

And he’d cut Steve’s hair, surely. It would have been one of those quiet mornings in their apartment, the windows thrown open because it was still summer and too hot.

Bucky’s fingers are in his hair now, face probably scrunched with disgust at how matted and dirty it’s gotten. But he doesn’t say anything.

Jones and Falsworth bring a table and a couple of extra chairs, and Dum Dum arrives last with the chips and cards. They play three hands while Bucky sears at Steve’s hair (and Steve writes off the way his chest tightens as phantom, just like the heavy, heady feeling that comes from being touched like this—alternatingly gentle and rough like ocean tides).

Then the hands are ripped away.

“What?” asks Steve, hoping he doesn’t sound as irritated as he feels.

“You guys don’t smell that?”

Dugan frowns. “Smell what?”

But now that Bucky mentions it, Steve does smell something. He stands, sniffing the air. “It smells like…”

“Shit,” Jones finishes, “it smells like _shit_.”

It’s a ridiculous statement because it _always_ smells like shit in the trenches, but it’s exacerbated now. Steve had assumed it was the rain, but now he worries it might be something else.

He steps out from beneath the canvas tarp and immediately finds himself shin-deep in brown, running water.

“Oh, fuck.”

Bucky leans out beside him. “What—oh, _fuck_.”

The trenches are flooding. Steve rushes to inform the others. The words are ripped harshly from his mouth. He shuffles past Bucky and reaches for their packs, shouldering the both of them while Bucky gathers the rest of their things. They don’t have much. _Nobody_ has much in the army. But he knows Bucky will want his knives, his dry socks, and most of all, his Strikes.

“Let’s go!” Buck calls to the other men. “Move out!”

Steve doesn’t know exactly where they’re headed. They need to get uphill, so he moves them east; Steve keeps hold of Bucky until in the chaos of dozens of soldiers trying to evacuate, he loses him.

Gunshots ring out and Steve tries not to panic. They hit the water and plop, grazing calves and ankles, staining the water with red.

Bucky will be okay. Bucky has survived worse.

Steve is almost tempted to call the men to a halt, but he can’t. Their momentum is too strong, there are injured with infected wounds that can’t be exposed to the water, and who knows how high it’ll rise?

Steve slips more than once. Hands grab him roughly and pull him back up and each time he hopes they’re Bucky, but they’re not.

The havoc is strangely silent, even with the gunfire. Everyone has enough sense not to yell or panic too much; no one wants to alert the enemy to their exact whereabouts.

Dugan, who has been at Steve’s side the whole time, hisses, “_Which way?_”

“_Here_,” Steve says, pulling at his sleeve. They climb over a mound of sandbags and crawl, slowly, toward the woods. Steve grunts when he trips over a root but keeps moving. “Climb?” Dugan asks, which Steve thinks is a pretty okay idea.

Steve hauls himself up onto a topmost perch and waits. He watches steadily as the lights in the trenches go out one by one, and then the sky is in the ground, stars splattered across the earth reflected by muddy waters.

He leans against the trunk behind as the gunfire tapers out. He’s wet and cold and shivering, but he freezes when he hears rustling.

Steve isn’t stupid enough to call out. He shifts as quickly and quietly as he can, ascending further up the tree to gain a higher vantage. He peers down through the dark, watching three dark shapes prowl through the shrubbery.

Two more are behind them, their figures bulkier. They slink like felines, pause when their pursuants do. Steve’s heart beats in tandem with their footfalls.

A knife’s edge catches moonlight and winks at Steve almost in reassurance.

Quickly, cleanly, the German soldiers are disposed of.

Steve slips down from his perch just as Bucky is wiping coagulated crimson blood from the blade of his Hitler Youth knife. “Where the hell were you?!”

“Keep your voice down, Birdie,” Bucky hisses. He unstraps Steve’s shield from his arm. “Went back for this. Figured you’d want it.”

Steve nods dumbly, taking it. Dugan jogs over. “We should move,” he advises.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky says, “just a sec.”

He kneels down and picks something up. Steve blinks, not sure his eyes are working right, because it looks like Bucky is holding a—

“Did you know they keep ’em in the trenches for the rats? Everyone always talks about it, but I’d never seen one. Thought they were a fucking myth until I tripped right over this little guy. I think I broke his paw and I felt bad so I decided to keep him. Anyway, meet Shitty.”

Shitty the cat meows, looking utterly miserable.

“Bucky,” Steve says, “what the fuck?”

. 

_I prayed for you yesterday. The bullets rained down on us and the heat of it all—the sweltering inferno of hot blood on the wet forest floor, god, it burned me like nothing could, but from the inside out, you know? And fuck, I fell to my knees when it was over, and I put my hands together and whispered your name, and I don’t know if He heard it but I sure as fuck did, and I’m almost certain it’s the only reason I was able to get back up again._

.

“Ow! Dammit!”

Shitty stares at him but Bucky refuses to be judged by a damn cat; “Shut up,” he tosses over his shoulder, fumbling for a rag to staunch his now bleeding hand.

“You’re a menace,” he snaps. “A horrible, _evil_, vile—”

“Bucky?”

Bucky whips around and finds Steve standing at the mouth of the tent. Ever since they reached base they’ve been bunking together, and it’s almost like old times except they sleep in two beds instead of one.

“Problem?” Bucky asks Steve.

“Phillips gave us a new location. We move out at 1800.”

Bucky nods. That gives them a good hour before they need to leave, and though he’s loathe to admit it out loud, Bucky can’t wait. It’s been two weeks since the trenches flooded and ever since they’ve been stuck here—him, and the guys, and Steve.

And Carter.

Whatever. If he weren’t so busy making eyes at the guy she’s making eyes at, he might be making eyes at her.

“Jesus, Buck, are you okay?”

Bucky starts a little as Steve kneels beside him. “What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Ah, yeah,” he shrugs a shoulder—the one that, in three weeks, he will not have. “Fucking cat. It’s just a scratch, Stevie.”

Steve isn’t listening, which isn’t anything new. He takes the rag from Bucky and frowns down at the wound which is, admittedly, deep enough to leave at least a faint scar. That’s good. He can talk it up to some dame when he gets back, pretend it was shrapnel or a close call with a Nazi.

Steve cleans it out as best he can and then wraps it up careful.

From the little shaving scuttle, Shitty the cat mewls petulantly. Bucky rolls his eyes. “Calm down, would you? I swear, you go ignored for five seconds and you think it means you’ve turned invisible.”

Shitty hisses.

“I don’t think he likes you.”

“_She_,” Bucky corrects. “I think.”

“Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like you.”

“Shut the fuck up, she likes me fine.”

He doesn’t need to look to know that Steve is grinning. Bucky rolls his eyes, holding Shitty by her scruff so that he can keep cleaning her. The water is filthy and she’s covered in suds, shivering, grey eyes big and blown.

To his surprise, Steve’s hands join his own in the water. He’s gentle about cleaning Shitty behind her ears and on her paws, even weathered and rough like that.

Because Steve has scars of his own now. He’s spent the last year fighting by Bucky’s side. Bucky doesn’t know how the time passed so quickly. He can’t see behind him and he can’t see ahead. There’s no end. It’s just days; rise with the sun, mess, train or scout or walk, fight somewhere in the middle, supper, sleep if it’s kind enough to come.

Shitty’s chest starts to vibrate, making the water ripple out. Bucky snorts. “I knew she was a softie underneath all that dirt.”

“Lot like someone I know,” Steve mutters.

Bucky bumps his shoulder against Steve’s. “You’re not getting soft too now, are you?”

“Oh, never.”

Bucky nods. “Good. And for the record: I’m not. Soft underneath, I mean. Maybe before but… not these days.”

Steve is looking at Bucky like he doesn’t believe him, and that sort of pisses Bucky off. “You fold your socks, Buck, excuse me if I’m not shaking at the sight of you.”

“Fuck off.”

It’s not that he wants to be hard, not that he wants to be stone, but this war is Medusa and he’s opened his eyes to it; he’s seen what Steve is still blind to. He knows there is no justice, he knows there is no mercy. They’re wandering Asphodel and Steve is seeing Elysium.

Bucky pulls Shitty from her bath and wraps her up in the towel he’d snagged from the shower tent. He dries her off as best he can with her squirming between his legs, yelping and hissing all the while.

Steve is watching him.

“Got something to say, Rogers?”

“Nothing,” is Steve’s reply, and his voice is strained in a way Bucky doesn’t recognise. “Just make sure you’re ready on time.”

Bucky salutes instead of sniping the way he wants to, because he knows Steve was just looking for something to say that wasn’t _if we don’t make it through this, goodbye_; and as it is, it feels sort of cheap, like something is missing from the way Steve pushes himself up and out of the tent.

“You see that bastard?” Bucky asks of his cat. “I’m in love with him—but uh, keep that to yourself, would you? Last thing I need is a blue ticket.”

The cat yowls, and fuck, it almost sounds sympathetic.

An hour later finds Bucky in the back of a jeep sitting between Steve and Dugan. The private is shuffling the same deck of cards he always keeps on him. Bucky wonders just how it is that he hasn’t lost any yet, even after the flood.

“How far away is this place?”

“About twenty miles,” Steve replies.

“Jesus,” Bucky says, as his head falls against the window behind. He closes his eyes and waits for dreams to come, but none do. There is no part of him remaining that can hope; he has no capacity to imagine or wonder.

All he sees is black.

When he opens his eyes again, they’ve stopped moving. The sky is indigo and there are no stars. Bucky rubs his eyes, neck aching, and yanks open the side door. “What’s the hold up?”

“Ah, so he’s awake,” Jones grunts from the ground. He’s holding a crowbar. “Tire blew.”

“Fuck,” Bucky swears, slipping out of the cabin. He kneels down in the snow beside Gabe. “How long have we been sitting here for?”

“Twenty minutes, give or take?”

“_Twenty?_”

“Well fuck, Sarge, I grew up in a city. I don’t even know how to drive, much less change a fucking tire.”

Bucky grunts, moving Gabe aside. He makes quick work of the bolts. “Where’s the spare?”

“The spare,” Gabe snaps his fingers, “right.”

“Jesus.” Bucky pinches his brow. “Where the hell is the captain?”

“They went to go survey,” Gabe says. “We’re only a little ways from where we needed to get to, anyway, so Captain Rogers said to wait here and fix the car in case we needed to make a quick getaway.”

Bucky could scream. “And he didn’t say to wake me?”

Gabe’s expression turns sheepish. “He, uh—he did—it’s just that you—well, you’re not exactly pleasant when you wake up, are you, Sarge?”

Bucky _does_ scream, then, on the inside; loud enough to crack the earth and cleave the trees and startle all the crows. “_Fuck me. _Just get the tire.”

Bucky doesn’t have to wonder why Steve didn’t take him along. He knows Bucky wouldn’t have approved of approaching on foot, but the impatient idiot had decided to go anyway. Those are the sorts of things he can get away with now, seeing as he outranks Bucky and all.

He gets the tire sorted out soon enough and then stands, popping his back. His trousers are soaked from the snow and so he rummages in the back for a spare coat, grabbing one for Jones too. “Which direction did they go in?”

Gabe points east. Bucky nods. “Right. Stay here.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, Jones.”

Gabe sighs. “Yes, sir.”

Bucky nods, giving him one last suspicious once over before jogging toward the thickets that mar the edge of the woods. He holds his rifle close, creeping along in the dark. It’s not his first rodeo and it won’t be his last, he’ll be damned sure of that, but he can’t help the way his heart hammers in his chest like it wants to rip free and run away.

Bucky crosses a small stream and takes the time to clear his face of sweat. Then he keeps moving, following the faint trail left behind by the others; snapped branches, flattened grass, footprints in the snow and mulch.

Finally, he sees lights.

The base is long and low and desolate. For acres there’s nothing but white, rolling all the way up to the high cement walls. It means if he walks out there, he’s easy pickings for sure.

Bucky sighs. He kneels behind a fallen log before deciding his vantage is better when he’s on his stomach. Then he waits, muscles stiff and stomach curling, for the shadows to shift.

It takes ten whole minutes for him to catch any movement. In between, gunshots carry across the distance. Bucky is certain, now, that the others are in there. How they’d managed their approach he’s not sure, but he’s not taking any chances.

He kills the first motherfucker on the roof and watches his body plummet over the side and streak the snow with blood.

“My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee,” Bucky whispers, as the HYDRA soldier’s friend comes running right into his next bullet. “I detest all my sins because of thy punishments,” another bullet, another dead man, “but most of all because they offend thee.”

The prayer stops, a wisp of silver steam floating skyward. Bucky waits.

Slowly, the last crow comes slinking toward the edge of the roof, crouched low. Bucky can just see the top of his head. He’s waiting for Bucky to do what most would; assume the coast is clear and run right into the open.

Bucky gets him in the crosshairs. The moon catches the sheen of sweat glistening on his brow. Bucky splits his skull in two.

“I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin.”

Bucky runs. He stops, scans the roof, and runs again. Over and over, each sprint is brief and full of terror. Finally he makes it to the busted open doors and the first thing he gets is a face full of Nazi; who, in turn, gets a face full of his fist.

Bucky shoots him. Rounds the corner. There are dead bodies littering the ground, stationary mannequins in pools of scarlet water. He makes sure not to step in it, because the last thing he wants is to leave tracks.

He clears one floor and, halfway through the second, rounds right on Dum Dum.

“Jesus H. Christ!” his friend hisses. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing!”

“Where’s Steve?”

“Roof, but—_Sarge_—”

Bucky doesn’t stop to listen. He pushes past Dum Dum, racing up the metal steps to the roof. The trap is unlatched and Bucky bursts right through to see Steve going fisticuffs with two Germans; there’s another out of it on the ground, but he’s groaning and rolling over by the time Bucky makes it onto the roof.

“_Hey!_” Bucky shouts, and rams the butt of his rifle into one of the men beating on Steve. He crumples to the ground.

“Buck, what—”

“Yeah, yeah, you can thank me later,” Bucky snaps, before putting a bullet in the leg of the Nazi he’d knocked out.

Another shot rings out and he assumes it’s Steve taking care of the other.

But Bucky had forgotten all about the third one. He’d forgotten, he’d turned his back, and he rounds just as Steve is falling to the ground in collapse.

Bucky has never felt a rage like this; first there is sheer horror and then there is _fire_; the marrow in his bones turns to magma, the blood to ichor. He moves without deciding to; it’s not a snap, it’s a spark. The Nazi is on the ground, Bucky’s fists are pummelling him, over and over. He doesn’t shoot because he wants it to hurt, he wants him to ache and he wants him to bleed.

He wants this fucker to suffer, and maybe that’s why he grabs him by the jaw and rams his head against the concrete ground; maybe that’s why he knees him in the groin and the ribs until he hears cracks; maybe that’s why he punches his face until it’s obliterated, just red, coagulated mush—

“Sarge,” rasps a voice, “holy fuck, Sarge, get off of him, he’s dead—”

_He’s dead,_ Dugan says, and Bucky assumes he means Steve.

But Steve is on his knees; panting and swatched with red but _breathing_. His eyes are wide. “Buck—”

“He shot you,” Bucky spits, haggard. “He fuckin’ shot you.”

Steve shakes his head. “Bucky, I’m okay. It just grazed me, is all.”

“No,” Bucky says, staggering, “no, I saw you fall—”

“Buck, it’s okay—”

Bucky wants to cover his face with his hands but they are covered in blood. He wants to hide behind himself but how can he when all of him is a mess, the inside and the outside? He can’t decide if he’d rather bear the look on Steve’s face or the catacombs of his own mind.

“Sarge,” Jones says, squeezing his arm, “we’ve all been there.”

“Don’t—” Bucky sucks in a shaky breath. He stumbles over to Steve and forces an arm out. “Get the fuck up.”

Steve does, bruised and beaten and broken, but not half as broken as Bucky.

.

_There is a monster inside me, a blackness in my veins where the blood is meant to be. I’m terrified of it and wonder if it’s always been there or if this war has bred and borne it. I wonder: when it ends, what will I be except a murderer?_

_Maybe one day I can go back home, battered and defeated and broken and hating myself. I don’t think I belong there anymore. I think here in the sorrow is where I’m thriving, here where I can pretend there’s beauty in dead things._

_Killing is an art, and as with everything, I’m fucking exceptional at it._

_I despise it, but I will take a thousand lives and more in your name._

.

Bucky pulls out a cigarette that reads IF LOST RETURN TO PROMETHEUS. He lights it swift and sucks a drag from it, a cherry-glow ember in the dark, a hazy veil of smoke shadowing his face. Steve can see by cinders of it: Bucky’s head tilted slightly, eyes trained on Dum Dum, mouth quirked up into a lazy grin—the kind, Steve has learned, that means he’s tired but would rather stay awake than miss out on all the fun.

Steve wants to draw him again. He wants Bucky made from charcoal and graphite, lingering as dark smudges on Steve’s hands; he wants to preserve the sight of him like this for eternity, wants his fingers to touch the page, to smudge the edges into something softer, to shade the world around him so that Bucky is the only bright thing in the darkness of night. He wants Bucky the way that he sees him.

But he’s too afraid after last time. He doesn’t want Bucky to see that piece of his heart—or worse, one of the other guys instead.

On Buck’s stomach, Shitty the cat is curled up into a ball staring right at Steve with pupils blown wide, vibrating. Bucky either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.

“That cat is possessed,” Steve says to him.

“Huh? Oh, that? Nah, she just likes what she sees.”

Steve shakes his head. He holds out his hand and Bucky passes the cigarette. The roll is messy and there’s no filter so he ends up with bits of tobacco stuck to his lips. Bucky grins when Steve tries to pick them away.

“Shut your trap.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking,” Steve argues, “I heard you.”

“Trust me Steve,” Bucky says, taking the last of it to finish off, “if you heard the things I think, you’d turn tail and run the other way.”

There’s something in his voice, the ragged way he talks, that almost makes Steve believe him.

“You mean the other day, right?” Bucky looks up. “Killing that Nazi? Listen, every one of us would have done the same thing if we’d been in your shoes.”

Bucky’s mouth shifts down. “Yeah, right.”

But he doesn’t believe Steve—maybe that’s not even what he’d meant and it’s like whatever he’s really thinking is so much worse. Something about that scares Steve a little.

But then Bucky throws the rest of his cigarette into the fire, bundles up his cat, and stands. “I’m gonna hit the sack, ladies,” he tells them, and salutes. “Don’t get too drunk.”

Gabe raises his flask. “Of course not, Sarge.”

One last time Bucky looks at Steve, and it’s the kind that lingers because this is one of the rare occasions where neither of them can read the other’s mind and it’s putting them both on edge. Then Bucky jerks his chin and turns, headed for a foxhole to sleep in. Shitty the cat stares at Steve over his shoulder until all Steve can see are two demonic eyes glinting in the dark, and then nothing at all.

. 

_My heart: bruised, ripped, battered._

_Yours._

_I gave it to you._

_My blood is your blood. My wounds are your wounds. My soul, my body, my flesh, my bones, take them, keep them. Fix me. You are Midas and I want you to touch me. Touch me everywhere so I can breathe again. Touch me everywhere so my heart can beat again. Touch me, please, god, touch me everywhere._

.

In the moment, the answer is clear. There is no other possible course of action. It is simply inconceivable to let Steve take the hit.

So Bucky does instead.

Death is an old friend and he’s been leering over Bucky’s shoulder for a while now. It’s only fitting that his hands, cold and clammy, clasp around Bucky’s throat then—ripped between his love and this inevitable end.

Bucky keeps holding, though, and he looks right into Steve’s eyes; wide, blue, full of equal parts fear and desperation.

He wants to say it; not that everything will be okay, because an eternity apart just doesn’t suit them, does it? He can’t say he’s sorry, because he’s not, and he won’t let his last words to Steve Rogers be a lie. He wants only to tell the first and only truth he has ever known, which is and always will be, _I love you. _

The words are stolen from his mouth by the wind and Steve is ripped from him and Bucky doesn’t even get the chance to feel the pain.

It’s just blue and white and hands, and then black, and then it’s over.

. 

_Do you remember the first time we ever drank beer? We were fourteen and you wanted to save the bottle caps and I wanted to chuck them in the East River so no one would ever find out?_

_I was thinking about that today. We both know I’m not a sentimental person, but for some reason I wish I had that bottle cap in my back pocket—maybe just so I could know that night was real and not my imagination playing tricks on me. I think it has been lately, because the details keep getting hazier. Used to be I could remember the way the moonlight looked on the water, the way it looked in your eyes. Now the only thing I can see is red._

_I’m a fucking schmuck, you know that? Thinking a Rolling Rock cap is gonna keep me from taking a bullet or something. A lot of the guys carry things like that. Dum Dum has this pocket watch that belonged to his old man, says that asshole carried it around through the first World War and the damn thing kept him from being skewered with a bayonet. There’s a big scratch on the back to prove it, even, cut right into the silver._

_I ever tell you about the first time I almost died out here? We were walking through the countryside and our boots kept getting sucked into the mud. I had my rifle in my hands and I was clutching it the way Becca used to hold her Margret O'Brien doll—god, you would’ve laughed, I just know it. I think I almost did, but it got stuck in my throat the second the gunshots ripped through the air. And that’s what they do, Stevie; they rip, like it’s all just paper thin; our skin, our bodies, the wind. You can hear them coming at you if it’s quiet enough, and it was real quiet then. Cold, too. When two privates went down our CO ordered us to fire back. They were coming out of the trees in packs of twos and threes like angry wolves and I kept thinking to myself, why are we doing this? What are all these kids who don’t even know each other dying for?_

_I realised we’re all just pawns in a big old chess game. When the bullet grazed my ear that day and I felt that heat, the kind that can only come when the inside of you starts pouring out, I thought I was done._

_And for some stupid fucking reason all I could think was, it never would’ve happened if I’d just had that damn cap on me._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi my dudes! so i was thinking about the fact that i first posted this story in its entirety as a one-shot, and i was like... 65k is a lot to read in one sitting. so i’ve decided to break it up into 4 parts, that way it might look more.... enticing? lmao. also, if you’ve already read the whole thing, the entire thing will all be back up in about 2-3 weeks I think?
> 
> anyway, here’s the second bit!

  
_ Act Two _

_in medias res_

FROM THE DESK OF DIRECTOR

PEGGY CARTER:

10-13-1956

CLASSIFICATION: ORANGE

[Petersburg, Virginia]: Reports indicate that the explosive device was installed some days prior to the actual detonation (23:39). Agents X and Y examined the scene; they found no lives spared. The target was believed to be the son of Ambassador Charles Cooper; Alexander Cooper, who was sent to live at St. Paul’s orphanage by his late aunt. He had been residing there for some time. Cooper had ties to the SSR, though the capacity of those ties remains unknown.

. 

1963 

.

The Asset ascends the stairs with an even heartbeat. He kneels at his perch and calmly assembles the sniper rifle. His hands do not shake. Every piece slips into place.

He turns to the window. The sun beats down upon the tarmac but they have given Soldier goggles, so he is not bothered.

He would not complain either way.

It is a sea of brightly dressed people; women in pea coats, men in button downs. They wave their hats and shout, hollering for the Target’s attention.

Soldier waits. He has time. The opportunity will present itself.

He takes the shot. There is silence and then there are screams. Soldier does not bother to look. He leans back and dissembles the rifle, before turning to un-gag the man they told him to watch.

“You have to go now,” says Oswald. “Be at the extraction point in thirty seconds.”

The Asset nods.

The job is done.

He will feel the cold soon and he will sleep. 

.

1969

.

He slips into the house through the back door. It is still and black in the living room. The gauzy curtains are the only things that move, shifting with the summer breeze.

Soldier scans his surroundings. His eyes lock onto the mouth of of the hallway, which he walks toward. He has five minutes, but it would be better to get in and out quicker than that. He has been watching this house for three days and the neighbors are nosy. Carol, from residence 1289, brought him a casserole last night.

He had left it to sit on the counter because Soldier only eats what they provide him with. The fridge is fully stocked, he has no need for outside sustenance and it could be poisoned besides.

Soldier climbs the stairs and finds the room where his targets sleep; he follows a muffled rumbling to the master bedroom. It is 22:45 and at this hour they should both be asleep, but he finds that the wife is sitting up in bed rubbing at her temples. He watches from the shadows as she takes her pillow and hits the husband with it.

He startles. The dull rumbling noise ceases.

“What?” asks the husband.

“You were snoring again, Terry,” says the wife.

Then she slips out of bed and stumbles toward the en suite bathroom. Soldier finds that there is a second entrance to it on his side of the wall. He slips inside, kicks the door she had come through closed with his boot, and covers her mouth before she can scream.

The wife begs but her words are muffled. Her blood paints the wall five seconds later.

The Asset steps over her body as he turns and finds the door open.

The husband stands. Blinks. Wild eyes land on Soldier.

“Listen to me,” he hisses, face wet with oil and silently falling tears, “I know that I messed up, but if you tell Pierce to just give me a little bit more time—”

Soldier shoots him.

He glances at the windows and makes sure that the curtains have not shifted. No one on the street will have seen him.

Soldier slips out the way he came.

.

1973

.

His hand is not his hand. His arm is not his arm. His body is not his body.

Soldier knows that. He lives by the simple truth that sometimes you just don’t exist. There is bone and blood and a heart, but there is no soul, there are no thoughts.

His head should be empty as he holds Baxtor’s below the water, but it is not. The man is drunk and does not fight back much. His arms and legs flail, but that is the extent of it, which makes the job easy. Within a minute he goes completely limp.

Soldier rises to his feet and stares at the man, who stares back. They have the same eyes now; blank, cold, like marbles. Inside Baxtor’s are the stars, and—

_which one is that?_

_cassiopeia. she was real stuck up. said she was more beautiful than all the nereids in the sea, so poseidon cursed her to spend all of eternity upside-down with her skirt hanging over her head. _

_yeah, right._

_no, it’s true, I swear—_

Soldier blinks. That is the third time it’s happened today; the third time he has seen the pictures in his head that move and glow and speak in his voice. He doesn’t know what they mean and he can’t…

There is a man at his feet and Soldier killed him. He terminated him like he was supposed to do. He knows the words, he knows the mission, he knows where he has to go next.

But in that moment, as the hands that don’t belong to him shake, he does not…

He does not _want_ to go.

It’s a strange and unfamiliar sensation, and having no memories to reference this desire, he embraces it though it seems wrong.

He was told to return to the hotel across town. That is the extraction point. _Go into the room, sit on the bed, wait to be picked up. They will come for you._

Soldier does not want to be picked up. Soldier does not want to go back to the base (he does not want to feel the cold again and he does not want to sleep again).

He did not want to kill this man.

He doesn’t know _why_ he killed this man.

(_your orders are to—_)

(_fuck the orders._)

Soldier stills. Slowly, carefully, he takes a step back. Then another. Soldier turns toward the black iron fence and as he moves, his gaze catches a shadow lurking in the window.

He should check on that. They would want him to. They always say to make sure he is never seen, never heard. They always say to kill whoever _does_ see him.

But Soldier doesn’t want to. He wants to leave. He wants to—

He wants to go home.

Where… where is _home?_

Soldier pushes that away. He doesn’t want to touch it right now. He needs to get away and that is a fact. He knows the steps. Get in, do not be seen, kill, get out, do not be seen.

Soldier hops the fence. He walks through the dark night, boots thudding against the blacktop. He mounts the motorcycle they let him use for some missions and pauses before turning it on, hands hovering over the leather grips.

He stares down at the metallic appendage fixed onto the body, and thinks very clearly, _that doesn’t belong there. _

Soldier flexes the fingers. They curl around the handlebars and the engine revs once. Then he heads out with no direction. He can’t remember ever doing this before but sometimes—sometimes they speak about him as if he is a series, ending and beginning again. Starting over multiple times. They say, _that’s not what it did last time,_ and when he tries to think of a _last time_, he comes up blank.

Driving past the extraction point he hesitates. Soldier stares up at the neon sign that reads VACANCY.

He is supposed to go inside. Those are the orders. Go inside and wait. Go inside and wait to be extracted.

(_No_.)

Soldier speeds away.

.

He drives. For how long, he doesn’t know, but even after the sun comes up he keeps going. At some point this bike will run out of gas, and he will run out of whatever fuel it is he needs to stay awake, but that hasn’t happened yet.

There is a fear: of being caught, of being found by them. That must be avoided at all costs.

He knows how to hide. They taught him. They gave him all the tools he needed to evade them and it wasn’t until now that he realised.

Soldier does not know where he is going until he finally pulls off at a rest stop after a day and a half of travel. He trudges inside with his head low. The bell on the door chimes as he enters, and Soldier resists the urge to reach up and rip it from its string. He wanders into the back of the shop searching for sustenance.

The food at the base is grey and watery. Soldier stares at the shelves in consternation, put off by the strange colours and shapes. He reaches for a little box, the only one that sparks familiarity; he feels like he’s seen this one before, or one similar to it. The words are printed in red, white, and blue. They read, in English, CRACKER JACK—

_I cannot believe you got the biplane and I’m stuck with this boring old shoe._

_Hey, the prize reflects the personality. _

_Shut the fuck up, you stupid punk—_

Soldier pulls the box off the shelf and hugs it to his chest reverently. He gives a final survey of the shelves and, at the last second, snags a bag of tiny red bears.

He brings them to the counter. The man behind double takes when he sees Soldier, and blinks twice at the bears. “Uh…”

“I need these. And a full tank of gasoline.”

“Oh—okay,” he fumbles. “Uh—how much money?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much money were you going to give me for your gas?” he elaborates, and then adds, “Sir?”

_Sir_. Soldier likes the word. It feels… right. Like maybe they called him that in a dream, one of the ones he is not supposed to have, the ones he lies about.

“I want seven gallons of gas.”

“Do you… do you have four dollars? For the food and gas?”

Soldier does not understand. “I want these things,” he says again, pushing the food forward, “and seven gallons of gas.”

The man blinks. “Okay, that’s fine, I dig it,” he nods, “but I need money, see?”

Soldier frowns. “I don’t have… money.”

“Then I can’t give it to you. Sucks, right? But that’s capitalism for you.”

Soldier mouths the word, brows furrowing. Then he looks back up at the man. “Your accent,” he says. “Where are you from?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, Queens.”

“Queens…?”

“New York,” he enunciates slowly, like the men often do with Soldier. “You never been?”

“I…” Soldier hesitates. “I’ve been. I need to go where the people sound like you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Soldier nods. He finds a new determination. _Queens, New York._ He looks back up and says, “Give me the things.”

“Dude… _no_.”

“Dude?”

“Uh,” the man shakes his head, “okay, you seem super out of touch and it’s—I mean, it’s concerning. Are you—where did you come from? Because like, if you’re on the run from that mental institution upstate, I seriously don’t think—”

Soldier slams his fist down on the counter. The man flinches and shuts up, eyes wide.

“Give me the food and the gas and I’ll let you live.”

A sound is swallowed back, something weak and fearful. Soldier hears it a lot from his targets just before he kills them. It has always made him feel wrong, sick; it’s even worse this time, for some reason.

“Okay,” he breathes, “okay, okay—seven gallons, number 4 outside.”

Soldier nods. He scoops up the food and, before opening the door, yanks the bell free. The man sputters. “Dude—_why?!_”

“Because I hate it,” he snaps over his shoulder.

“_What the fuck,_” the man whispers to himself as Soldier leaves.

He is calm as he re-fills his tank and even stops to rip open the Cracker Jack box. The taste of the caramel—he _remembers_ it. He knows this is not the first time he’s eaten it, but he can’t think of a time before now when he has. It’s strange, like an itch he can’t scratch or the pains he sometimes feels where his other arm is meant to be.

At the bottom of the box, there is a small plastic circle painted red, white, and blue. At the centre is a star.

Soldier knows it. He _knows_ it. He has seen it before, he has held it before.

Without thinking, he stows it in his pocket. The gas pump chimes. Soldier kicks the stand up on his bike and mounts it, casting a last glance at the rest stop door before steering out of the filling station.

.

He makes several stops a day. It takes, roughly, two weeks to get from California—the place he had been sent—to New York. Soldier rarely sleeps and when he has to, he does it in the woods. It, again, does not feel like the first time. Even so he can’t relax long enough to rest well and his body aches by the time he reaches the city.

Soldier finds his own way to Queens without the aid of a map or any other form of guidance. He just knows, like he knows how to breathe or speak, the way there.

And upon his arrival, there is no great sense of relief or belonging. Soldier can tell that this is not his home, but his spine tingles in a way that tells him he is _close_. So he keeps driving, keeps searching, and finally ends up standing in front of a seven-story brickwork building in a place called Brooklyn.

There is a placard on the wall beside the front entrance that reads: STEVE G. ROGERS & JAMES B. BARNES PRESERVATION

Soldier stares at that for a long time. The tingling has progressed to waves of dread that wrack his whole body—for this body is his, and he is inside of it, and there are parts that don’t belong but it is _his_.

He steps toward the building. Pauses and scans the street. There is a line leading from the green-painted front doors all the way to the end of the next building. Soldier does not understand. Why should he have to wait to enter the building? Why are all of these people standing here with white slips of paper in hand, talking in animated voices like they’re about to see a flick?

_A flick_, he thinks. _A movie_.

He both knows and does not know the word.

What he does know, wholly and completely, is that standing outside of this building for hours just might be the stupidest fucking idea he has ever heard of. Instead he circles around the back and hauls himself up the fire escape. There is a lock blocking off the window he is certain belongs to the apartment he means to enter, and it breaks easily enough under the metal fist.

The window slides up.

Soldier steps inside carefully.

The wood creaks beneath his boots. The air is full of dust. It smells stale, dull; not at all like how it should. He just wishes he knew what it is meant to be instead.

Slowly, gingerly, he closes the window behind. The sound of voices carries. Soldier does not want to be seen by the people here—the people touring the apartment. It is a museum exhibit, now, but deep down he is certain:

This place had once been his _home_.

“And here we have the kitchen,” the guide—a woman—is saying. “The food itself was removed, but the packaging still remains. Note the scarcity of the fridge, the cupboards—the world was still recovering from the Great Depression—”

Soldier ducks into the first room he sees as the group makes to filter through the bedroom where he had entered.

No one sees, of course. Tentatively he flicks on the light.

The bathroom.

The white shower curtain with the paisley patterns. The sink with the rusted faucet that only ran freezing cold water. The cracked, spotted mirror—and behind it, the shelves—

Two toothbrushes, a roll of toothpaste that they shared; a bar of lye soap, a razor, a can of aerosol spray.

Red and blue. His toothbrush had been the red one. It sits crossed with the other in a glass cup, innocently, frozen in time—

_did you use my toothbrush again?_

_fuck no, I don’t need your damn diseases—_

Soldier backs against the wall. His breaths are coming too quick, his chest hurts, he’s falling down onto the cold tile floor—what is this? What’s _happening_ to him?

The doorknob raffles and then someone knocks. “Excuse me?”

Soldier grunts.

“Excuse me,” the voice comes more forcefully, that of the tour guide, “sir, you can’t be in there. This area is off limits to guests.”

“Yeah?” Soldier asks, standing and rubbing at his heart. “What about tenants?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Good, you should be.”

“Sir—”

Soldier yanks the door open. The woman steps back warily, grey eyes wide. She flounders for a second. “Do I—do I know you?”

“No,” he replies, because they shouldn’t. He doesn’t remember ever meeting her.

Even so she squints with suspicion. Then, “Please, if you could rejoin the tour?”

“I don’t think so,” Soldier says, brushing past her. “I was just on my way out.”

“Sir—”

“Thank you, though. Ma’am.”

She keeps calling after him even after he’s walking away—something about plumbing and respecting history and living up to the standards of Captain America. Soldier’s heart stutters at the name and his hand falls to his pocket where they toy shield hides.

He can’t stay, as much as he wants to. He has to leave or they will find him. Still Soldier spares one last sweeping glance—the kitchen with the white stovetop and the floral hand towel thrown over the oven handle; the table with the two chairs, the vase holding a withered and pale chrysanthemum; the old couch, the TV set, the wood burning fireplace.

This place had been _his_. He had come home to it every night—or at least, most nights. He had walked along these floors and lived inside these walls and he had not been alone.

_Steven G. Rogers. _

Soldier knows that name, just like he knows the name _James Barnes._ Only, he knows it in a different way; a way that makes his blood hot and his stomach churn and drop. Not fear, not anger, but… god, _what?_

Soldier stops by the door.

There is a three legged table with a doily on top, yellowed with age. He had hated it before and he hates it now, but that’s not where his attention falls.

Two books, leather-bound, one larger than the other. Soldier leans down.

His fingers gently brush their spines. The covers are soft, well-worn, faded from years in the sun. Soldier is inching to grab them when—

“_Sir_.”

His head whips around. The tour guide has her hands on her hips. Nothing about her is intimidating in the slightest, but Soldier can not afford to attract attention. He stands, brushes off his knees, and slips out the front door.

He will come back later.

.

At night, it’s different. Softer, somehow.

The rooms look empty but they’re full of ghosts. Soldier can see them; a scrawny kid leaning against the counter sipping coffee from a mug; and then, sprawled out on the sofa in a too-big sweater, the collar between his teeth, charcoal streaked across his cheek.

Soldier knows that the boy in his head is Steve. He knows, and the pictures he had missed before—the ones mounted on the wall—only cement the gut feeling.

Soldier stares at the pictures and his own face stares back.

Him in a military dress uniform with the hat cocked sideways, grinning easy. The picture is dated 1944.

There are others, dated from before and after. He is captured in shades of noir and sepia, laughing, smiling, an arm thrown around Steven Rogers’ shoulders like it belongs there. _Yes_, that’s his arm, that’s his face, that’s his _name_—his name is _Bucky_.

Soldier pulls one of the frames off of the wall. This one is smaller. It could fit in his pocket. It is just Steve—a portrait, oval-shaped, black and white. Steve is skin and bones and scowling, like he wants to look serious but he really just looks dumb.

The corner of Soldier’s mouth quirks up. Startled, he drops the picture. The glass cracks and shatters across his boots.

Soldier stares stupidly.

He will have to clean it, but for now he steps away, toward the darkened bedroom. The shadows draped over the small alcove where the bed is tucked. It is big enough for just two, and he knows they had shared.

The fingers of his warm hand gingerly brush the sheets. They stop at the pillows. Steve had slept on the right side. His head had once rested right where Soldier’s hand is now. He had been real, he had been alive. The whole world knows him, knows _them_. They have walked through their lives with open-mouthed fascination, memorised the details of their history: every book on the shelves, the comics cut out and magnetised to the fridge, the red thermos on the counter.

These ugly fucking sheets.

“Old lady patterns,” he whispers, and snorts. “I remember that.”

They’d bickered about it. He can’t recall the exact words, but he knows the frustration he’d felt every time he crawled under the covers, even when he was beaten down and exhausted from work. _How am I supposed to sleep in a bed that smells like mothballs?_ he would ask, and Steve would say, _Easy, just shut the fuck up and close your eyes. _

Soldier turns away from the bed. He doesn’t want to look at it any longer.

He goes straight for the books. Hesitates before grabbing them and stuffing them in his coat. Quickly and quietly he cleans up the mess.

Soldier stows the picture away with the books and leaves.

.

He is tucked away in the flophouse when they find him.

The bed is metal and creaks with every movement. Soldier—_Bucky_—spends most of the day there, writing in the notebook with the pencil he had found in the spine of the other, heavier book. He writes what he can remember. He writes his name, over and over, and writes what he is not.

Sometimes he will open the sketchbook and flip through the pages, or even just run his fingers over the messily scrawled signature just inside; _Steven Grant Rogers. _

There are drawings of him. He looks like he does in the pictures: his hair is shorter, his smile is wide and white, his eyes have life inside them, not stars but suns. He is a human being, real and his own.

On the second day in Brooklyn, Soldier cuts off all of his hair. He wants to feel closer to the person he was before they made him a weapon; he wants to sink back into Bucky Barnes like falling into ocean waters.

_MY NAME IS BUCKY, _he writes, and then a gunshot cuts through the silence of the dilapidated apartment complex. Soldier shoots to his feet and gathers his things. He loads his gun, dons his coat, and jumps out the window just as the bedroom door bursts open.

Soldier tucks and rolls and then keeps running. He shoots off down the street, knocking people over and not sparing a second thought. The only thing he can hear is the pounding of his own heart.

_His_ heart. _His_ body. He is a person, he is Bucky, he does not belong to them.

Soldier cuts through an alley. He can hear them running after him, likely disguised as local authorities so as not to arouse too much suspicion. Civilians will make way for them. They will make it easy for HYDRA to catch up once again.

Soldier scans the alley. He knows it. He has been here before, just not in this series. As Bucky, he thinks.

He also knows that there is a small space carved into the brickwork of the abandoned theatre where things can be stashed. He had kept a bottle of scotch there once, a pack of smokes, and when he was younger: trading cards and comics.

Now, he rips the bricks away and shoves the books inside. Covers them up again, hops the chain link fence, and keeps running.

Eventually, they find him. They corner him on a rooftop and though he takes out a handful of the agents, there are too many, and all they have to do is say the words, and then _Sleep, Soldier. _

Then it’s all over, just like that.

.

1994

.

Svetlana’s bullet is off the mark again. Natalia notices this and smirks, but only to herself; the wolf is prowling their ranks again today. It is the fourth time this week, and though she has yet to hear him say a single word, she fears him.

It takes much to make Natalia fear. Perhaps it is something to do with his arm: the way it whirs and clicks. Or perhaps it is his height; he towers over all of them, even Melia who is five inches taller than them all.

Or maybe it is his eyes: they are dead like frozen rocks in his skull.

Valentina hits the bullseye. No one claps like they used to when they were young, mostly because all of the girls are jealous of Valentina. Melia nods to her because Melia is a fucking _marionetka_, but Natalia sees that there is nothing to be jealous off; Valentina is just a hair off centre mark.

Natalia can do better with eyes closed.

The wolf has yet to see her shoot. She prowls among the girls as much as he does, blending in seamlessly. Now seems to be the time: if this is the best any of the girls can do, perhaps she should show them what real precision looks like.

Natalia steps forward. Throws up her glock. She turns to catch the cold obsidian eyes of the Winter Soldier at the last second and fires then, muscles locked for the kickback.

She does not look to check her mark. She knows it is perfect.

Natalia is not expecting applause. She simply turns around and fades back into the crowd of girls, feeling the wolf’s eyes on her. _Do you see now? _she wants to ask, _the pelt I wear? Volk v ovech’yey shkure. I am a wolf like you. _

After, the others spill out into the hallways. They will go to mess or the showers or the barracks. Natalia stays behind to return the weapons to the armoury, a job that most of them despise for the time it takes.

She craves the quiet; the mindless, repetitive task: release magazine, open slide, empty chamber; close slide, pop the spring, remove the barrel, polish.

“Good aim.”

Natalia does not jump. She had heard him. He is no fox. His feet are like thunder.

“You are not supposed to compliment trainees.”

“I enjoy breaking rules.”

Natalia raises her eyes and pins him with all of her ten-year-old wisdom. “Do you?”

There is a brief flash of uncertainty, quick like lightning, before his face settles back into stone. “You know your way around a weapon.”

“I am a weapon.”

The wolf’s lips thin, like something about this proclamation displeases him. It had made Pierce laugh to hear it and she can’t think why the wolf would want to hear anything otherwise. After all, he is a weapon too. He even looks like one on the outside.

“Your name?”

“Natalia.”

He takes a step into the vault. Watches her piece a gun back together. It feels like calculation but her fingers don’t fumble; it’s a dance, she knows the steps, she could put it back together in her sleep.

“You’re bored with your lessons, Natalia.”

Observation after observation. No questions. He makes his assessments and tosses them out into the open air and so far he has not been wrong.

“I enjoy them fine,” she lies.

“You don’t like the other girls.”

Natalia bites the inside of her cheek. It’s a tell, her worst one, the one she cannot seem to break. “I enjoy them fine.”

“You think Melia is a little kiss ass.”

Natalia slowly looks up. “So do you.”

If a wolf could smile, maybe he would. “Tell me: what do you think of the others?”

“Yesfir can’t shoot for shit,” is the first thing Natalia says. She doesn’t know why she tells him what she really thinks. He just doesn’t seem like the type to give enough of a fuck to tell the Men. “She should be cut. Valentina is too arrogant. Polina is a chatterbox.”

“Boltun—sokrovishche dlya shpiona.”

Natalia hums at the words. _Chatterbox. A treasure for a spy._

The wolf speaks again, stepping closer. “Do you know what happens to the girls they cut?”

Natalia has never much thought about it before. It’s rare, after all, that any are. They are the best of the best. This program is not for the faint of heart. Still, her hands freeze around the barrel of the gun and she asks, “Are they killed?”

And the Winter Soldier says, “Yes.”

Natalia slowly sets down the gun. She thinks, tries to remember the names of the girls from before. _Lilya, Maria, Ivelina. _

“Why?”

“Tsep’ nastol’ko zhe sil’na, naskol’ko i yeye samoye slaboye zveno. It will snap where it is thinnest.”

Yes, that makes sense, but when she looks up she sees that his face has darkened. He does not like it either. It makes her feel better for finding a certain disgust in the idea. She would rather they were tossed out into the snow than killed. At least then, maybe they would have a chance to survive.

Natalia swallows the sour taste in her mouth. She picks up the gun. “Yesfir will learn. I will teach her.”

The wolf nods. “And I’ll teach you.”

.

1995

.

“You have good form.”

Natalia falls out of her pirouette but does not lose grace. Her pink skirt is a wisp around her waist, like rose petals in moonlight. “I thought you were supposed to be in Japan,” she says.

“I was,” Soldier agrees. He sits. “I finished.”

“That quickly?”

“It wasn’t hard.”

Just his hand closing around a woman’s throat while her husband watched and begged and cried. Just her body falling limp to the floor as their dog yapped incessantly. Soldier had put it down there and then, and then the husband too. There had been so much red.

Natalia resumes her routine. “One day, I want to be that fast.”

“One day you might.” He frowns. “Being quicker is better. Less chance of you getting caught, less time you have to spend in the company of corpses.”

Natalia stills. She turns to face him. “That’s an ugly word.”

“What? Corpses?”

She nods. “Ylena calls them puppets.”

“That’s worse,” Soldier decides. “Puppets are things you play with. You don’t play with dead bodies.”

“She says the whole thing is like a game and because they look like puppets with cut strings when they’re killed, it makes sense.”

“It’s not a game.”

She comes closer. “But wouldn’t seeing it that way… wouldn’t that make it easier, too?”

“Are you having difficulty complying?”

Her eyes widen. “No,” she says, quickly. “I just… I don’t want to be weak. I want to be strong, like you.”

Soldier looks away. “I’m not strong.”

She raps her knuckles on his metal arm, face etched with disbelief. “You can crush skulls with your bare hands, I’ve seen it. You’re very strong.”

_Not on the inside, _Soldier thinks, and his frown deepens. He turns to look at her, considers her small form and wide green eyes, and realises very suddenly, with a strange and unwelcome sense of horror, that he and this small child are discussing all the ways to make killing a man easier on the soul. He remembers that he has dedicated weeks if not years to helping her perfect her technique. He is a killer and the disease has spread like wildfire from his murderer’s heart. He has infected her with the desire, the passion, the craft, of killing.

“You don’t look well. Were you hurt on your mission?”

“No,” Soldier replies flatly.

“See?” she smiles. “Strong.”

Soldier shoots to his feet. He paces the length of the studio and rounds on her like a caged wolf, feral and disoriented, fear gnawing away at his insides.

“Where did you come from?”

Natalia’s face twists with confusion at the question, meaning he’s truly caught her off guard. “A place, just like you. I don’t know. What does it matter, anyway? We’re here now.”

Yes, they’re here. The both of them living in this grey concrete building, surrounded on all sides by fields of snow, a never ending winter. It goes on and on forever, it is immortal, creeping low beneath the spring and summer, wringing its cold fingers around the neck of autumn and choking until all the life dies.

Winter, the prowling wolf, with blood of blackened ichor.

Natalia tilts her head to consider him and just for a moment she is someone else. She is another girl, pale and rail-thin and smiling crooked, freckles splattered across her nose, brown hair falling from its braid. She is… who is she? What’s her name?

Soldier knows her. He _knows. _

“Remus?”

Soldier snaps back to attention. There again is Natalia, not a hair out of place, teeth perfectly straight when bared. _Remus, _she had called him. “What?”

“Remus,” she says again. “Don’t you remember?”

“I—no.”

Natalia sighs and rolls her eyes, the picture of exasperation. “They keep doing that,” she complains, taking his silver-stained hand in her own of porcelain. She guides him back over to the benches.

“Doing what?” he asks.

“Taking pieces away,” Natalia says. She sits with legs criss-crossed. “It’s inconvenient.”

“Is Remus my name?”

“It’s my name for you,” Natalia says, and reaches out to knock him again, but this time on the forehead. “It’s really not in there? You call me Romulus, after the twin wolves from Rome—Rom, like Romanova?”

Soldier blinks. It’s coming back to him. “They were left by the river Tiber to die—”

“But the river god saved them,” Natalia finishes with a nod. “They weren’t really wolves, just like we’re not, but they were raised by one.”

Soldier remembers reading about this a long time ago, but cannot place where and when he was. He just knows it’s not the first time he’s heard the story. It disturbs him.

Abruptly he stands.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

The words fall out, honest and full of terror. Natalia is only watching him with curiosity. Her eyes flit to the door and then back to him. “You’re right. It’s late. We should both sleep.”

Soldier flexes his hands. One silent, warm; the other whirring and freezing.

“Right,” he says, “sleep.”

Natalia rises and makes for the door, giving him a wide berth that speaks of the wariness she feels, something that makes him sick. He calls after her suddenly, and the words come out of him like they are something he thought of a long time ago but only just now remembered:

“You’re not a wolf, Natalia.”

She turns to him, hurt. “What?”

“Wolves are messy,” Soldier says. “They’re stupid. They need the moon to guide them and to see by. But you… you could live your whole life in the dark and never imagine there was such a thing as sunlight. You kill in silence. You’re not a wolf, you’re a widow.”

Her back straightens. She nods once, succinct. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Romanova.”

She leaves. Soldier is left alone. He drifts toward the windows and looks up, hoping against hope that maybe he will find answers in the sky.

.

1997 

.

“You’re awake.”

The woman strapped to the metal chair slowly raises her head. Her black eyes blink deliriously as she soaks in Natalia, who is perched on a nearby table, sharpening the knife she will use today.

“I remember you,” she whispers, “you were very little when we last spoke, Natalia.”

“Yes,” she agrees.

“And now they’ve sent you to kill me.”

It isn’t a question. “Yes,” Natalia says again. She runs her whetstone rod along the edge of her blade again, and the sound shreds through the hanging silence. Then Natalia breaks eye contact. “But not just me.”

“Not just you,” Florentia Craioveanu repeats dumbly.

The shadows shift and out of them, the wolf emerges. His eyes are dark and glinting like flintstones. His hands are laced behind his back. He is at ease, poised, ready like a dancer in the face of a grand jeté.

Florentia looks up at him for a long moment and then spits at his shoes. “HYDRA’s dog.”

“So it’s true,” Natalia asses. “You’ve deflected? Betrayed us?”

Florentia snorts like this is funny. “What’s there to betray?”

“Your family.”

Florentia outright laughs. Her eyes are pitying and Natalia doesn’t like that, but she stays still like stone, waiting. “This isn’t a family, Natalia, it’s a masquerade. Can’t you see that by now? Those girls you call your sisters, the ones that you compete with—who can kill the fastest, lie the best—none of it is real. There’s a whole world out there they’ve never even let you _see_.”

Natalia slips off the table a quick as a snake provoked to anger. She circles Florentia. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“Natalia—”

“Every family has a black sheep,” Natalia goes on. “You just don’t fit in, so you convince yourself that you’re the only one who can see the world for how it _really_ is.”

Florentia narrows her eyes, and Natalia remembers that though she is a traitor, she is a deadly one. “How do _you_ see the world?”

“I’m not here to have a philosophical debate. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does,” Florentia insists. “It’s the _only_ thing that matters.”

“You’re trying to get into my head,” Natalia snaps. “It doesn’t matter. The only thing worth discussing is just what you told your little American friends.”

Florentia sighs, rolls her neck. “I told them a lot of things,” she claims lazily, “who the hell knows what they remember, or what I do. No point in torturing me, we all grow up learning to live with the hurt. Go ahead, Natalia. Put me down just like they told you to. That’s your job, right? That’s what they’ve sent you here for? And the dog—he’s here to make sure you don’t get any ideas.”

Natalia glances at the wolf, who remains stoic in his corner. “What do you mean, ideas?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“You’re trying to trick me.”

Florentia scoffs. “Listen to you,” she snarls. “You sound like a child, a little girl. I’m not trying to trick you, I’m trying to _help_ _you_.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Natalia, if you let me go—”

“No.”

“Listen to me,” Florentia hisses, eyes wild, emblazoned with an animal fear, “if you undo my bonds, the two of us could take down the wolf together—”

“No.”

Florentia stares at her for a long moment, gaping, and then her whole body sags with defeat. “God, you could be so much more than what they’ve made you. It’s sad, really.”

Natalia bristles, hand curling tighter around the grip of her gun. “Nobody made me, Craioveanu.”

“That’s what you want to think,” Florentia nods, simpering, “but somewhere deep down there’s a fear, a little dark wisp that whispers to you in the night: _what if what they’re teaching me to do isn’t right? What if I wasn’t born to kill? What if I could be normal? What would that be like—_”

Her little spiel is cut short as Natalia backhands her. Florentia breathes heavily for a moment, glaring at the wall, and then turns back slowly with a bead of blood on her lip and a reddened cheek. Natalia walks off her wince, slinking around her target. She leans in close. “Nobody made me, but _me_. Everything I do, I do because I want to.”

“That’s what they want you to think.”

“It’s what I _know._” She shakes her head. “You’re pathetic.”

Florentia startles her with an outright laugh. “_I’m_ pathetic?! And what about him?” She jerks her chin toward the wolf. “You think he was always this way, Natalia? You think he was always so dead behind the eyes?”

Natalia looks at him, meets those eyes and sees the spark of intrigue he’s trying to stamp out; worse than that, Natalia sees fear there. She has never once seen him look afraid and yet there it is, stark in the obsidian sleet.

“Look at him,” Florentia whispers. “He’s just a little boy underneath it all. Did you know, I found his file once. I snuck into Pierce’s office and I read it, and by god, Romanova, the things they did to him—”

“_Enough._”

They both silence at his voice, because it is ingrained in them, because of the hardness in his tone, because he could snap their necks without missing a beat. The wolf steps forward and considers Florentia.

“What did it say?”

“I’ll tell you if you let me go.”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid I can’t do much for you, James.”

He turns to stone. The wolf, carved of marble, face white, eyes wide. Natalia feels dread coil in her stomach and churn like a tempest; _James_, she thinks, looking the soldier up and down. _His name is James. _

The wolf blinks. He backs off a step. “I-I shouldn’t be here.”

“Your orders are to observe and ensure the termination of the traitor,” Natalia protests quickly, fear constricting her throat. “She’s lying to you—”

“She said my name is James,” he goes on, as if he didn’t hear her. “My _name_—”

“It’s not. It’s just a made up story in a file—”

“_No_,” the wolf snarls, stepping towards her—and he has never before gotten so close, been so furious with her—“it’s not made up. It’s _real_. I’m not supposed to _be here—_”

“You see?” Florentia presses. “He’s remembering. I saw it happen once before. It’s all still there deep down: New York, the war, his little friend—”

“_Stop_,” Natalia hisses. “They’ll hurt him.”

“Oh, so you do care? Good to know there’s a shred of compassion left in you.”

The wolf flexes his metal hand. “What else do you know?”

“Nothing I’m willing to say.”

“My friend,” he insists. “You said I had a friend. What was his name?”

“How do you know it was a ‘he’?”

“I don’t—” he shakes his head, “Just _tell me!_”

Even Florentia flinches. Natalia takes a deep breath, backing up a pace. “Calm down—”

“No,” he growls, feral and rabid; his hair obscures his face as he shakes his head and begins to pace the length of the cell, a caged beast (and if there is one thing Natalia has learned in all of her years of training, it is that there is nothing more dangerous than a wild and willful spirit). “No, _no_, I’m not supposed to be here, I’m not supposed to be doing this—”

“What did you _do?!_”

Florentia smiles up at her. “What needed to be done.”

Natalia shakes her head, furious. She cocks her weapon and brings the barrel to rest against Florentia’s forehead—

And remembers, suddenly, that on her sixth birthday this very woman had snuck into the kitchens to bake her a cupcake that she and Yesfir had shared in the dark of the barracks; she remembers that this woman had taught her how to reload a gun, how to properly curl the fist for a punch, how to perform the Swan Lake dance.

They had even played the lying game together, sitting on the floor across from each other, one holding a whip and the other with palms up, weaving a story until caught in a false truth.

Natalia realises, horrified, that she cannot bring herself to pull the trigger.

It is what she is supposed to do. These are her orders. She takes her orders and she carries them through without complaint or thought; because she doesn’t know the men she kills, doesn’t care for them, is certain they have done more harm than good in this world.

But Florentia had been a sister once.

“Do it,” she hisses, eyes full of furious tears. “Kill me, Natalia, or they’ll kill you.”

A gunshot rings out.

Natalia lowers her weapon, shaking.

And so, too, does the wolf.

“Why did you _do that?_”

“She said—” he shakes his head in confusion, “she said they would hurt you. I just didn’t want—I don’t know—”

Natalia swallows. This needs to stop. She needs to fix him before they find out he is broken, so she says, “You did it because it’s what you were supposed to do. That was the mission.”

“The mission?” he repeats, dully.

Natalia nods. “Our objective was to terminate Florentia.”

“But—but she was right, wasn’t she? There’s more than this fucking _prison_—”

“It’s not a _prison_, it’s our _home_.”

“It’s not! She said—a city, she named a city—”

“Look at me.”

He does. He has never once followed a command that she has given him, and really, she has never once dared to try. But he is trembling like a leaf clinging to its last dead branch, cracked open so the terror spills right out into the floor like the blood pooling around their boots. Natalia puts her hands on either side of his cheeks.

“You know me?”

He nods. “I know you.”

“I know you, too,” she says. “That’s all that matters. We have each other. You have me.”

It isn’t enough, she knows—a thin gauze dressing for an open wound, really—but it will have to do for now.

“I have you,” he repeats.

Natalia nods. Their foreheads press together. He is so much taller than her but she knows, in that moment, he would break his own back just to have something to hold onto.

Then he jerks away. He looks at Florentia like he’s forcing himself to do it, like the sight makes him sick.

“Go.”

Natalia can’t even bring herself to argue. She just rounds and walks for the door, leaving red footprints in her wake. She can hear him muttering to himself: _James, New York City, James, James, James, _and then—

“Natalia.”

She stops. Turns.

His gaze his heavy. “If anyone asks about this, tell them you killed her. Do you understand?”

Natalia can only nod.

She is halfway down the long stretch of hall, cavernous and dark, when a voice calls out to her. It is not deep enough to belong to the soldier, and she knows from its silk that she must stop and present herself with a straight back and a smile.

Alexander Pierce regards her most favourably under normal circumstances.

These circumstances are far from normal.

“It’s done?”

“Yes,” she says, clasping her hands behind her back. “The traitor was taken care of.”

He nods slowly. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Natalia nods and waits for dismissal, but then he steps closer, smelling of bourbon and lemongrass, and whispers, “I heard a number of things, actually. Tell me, agent, was it you who killed the traitor, or the Asset?”

He was listening. Of course. Natalia had not expected that; so often they use those rooms and it once has anyone been standing behind the looking glass. She swallows. “I…”

“You failed to comply with the commands you were given.”

“I don’t—”

Then his hand is on her arm, squeezing, and god it would be so easy to shatter him into a thousand pieces but she knows, she can’t. “You don’t what?”

“I don’t understand,” she says, softly, and meets his eyes. “Wasn’t the assignment simply to ensure that the target was killed? I wasn’t aware that I was meant to be the executioner.”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Pierce hisses, and slams her against a wall. Natalia’s brain rattles in her skull. “You were given specific instructions. Here’s another one: you will forget everything you heard in that room. You will not address the Asset as anything other than soldier. You will not address this incident again. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

Pierce stares at her for a long moment. Then his touches change, and his hands grab at places he shouldn’t be grabbing, and Natalia hears only ringing and sees only black and knows that she is stuck, knows that she cannot refuse him, knows what he wants and knows that he will take it no matter what; no matter if he has to strap her down or sedate her or sculpt her into an effigy as they did for the wolf—for James.

She can’t—she doesn’t want but she _has to_—

“Has it touched you like this?”

_Stopstopstopstopstop—_

Natalia’s throat burns with something acrid. “No.”

“What have we said about lying?” Pierce presses. “I saw you with it in there. You fucked it, didn’t you?”

“_No_.”

Pierce tuts. Natalia grunts when he grows rough and then—then there’s a shift in the shadows, a glint of silver. Pierce emits a strangled, wet gurgling sound and then he’s being raised higher, up over her head off the ground, only to be dropped back down again—so hard the floor cracks.

“You,” Pierce hisses, scrambling to his haunches, “you were supposed to be contained. Where are your handlers, soldier?”

“Dead.”

Pierce’s face is red with fury. “_Guards!_” He screams. “Romanova—detain him!”

Natalia makes no move.

“_Romanova!_”

His anger falls away as the wolf leans over him. He is deadly calm. “Touch her again and I don’t care where you put me or who you make me, I will find you and I _will_ kill you.”

Natalia finally looks away.

“Go,” the wolf says to her again.

“But—”

“They’re going to try to take me away and if they do they’re going to hurt me,” he says. “You don’t need to see that.”

Natalia’s palms sting. She realises she has buried her nails into them. “You won’t remember me, will you?”

“I don’t know.”

Natalia bites her cheek, summons her courage, and says, “It was nice to know you, James.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You too.”

She retreats into the dark just as she hears the sounds of footsteps—hoards of soldiers coming to detain just one man. She knows that no matter how strong he is, he doesn’t stand a chance against all of them. He is going to die tonight, one way or another.

.

1998 

.

Natalia does not see him again until she is fourteen.

She is secluded in an antechamber off of the main dance hall enjoying a rare moment of silence. Normally this is where Pierce sits to observe their routines; the entire right wall is a one-way-mirror to which faces a chair. Beside it is a polished cherry-wood table, upon which rests two crystal cut glasses and a decanter of whiskey.

Natalia pours herself a drink.

There is no harm in it, just now. Pierce is in America for the moment. Madame B had mentioned he would be away for a month or more.

She sits and watches Yelena twirl, over and over again, never falling, never getting dizzy. Every turn holds a deadly sharpness and her eyes stay open through every pirouette—like she knows Natalia is watching, like she knows about the room.

Which is possible, of course. Natalia only knows because Pierce had taken her here the morning after the Winter Soldier had been dragged into the recesses of this building before being shipped off to who knows where. He had spoken to her sternly, threatened to kill her if she ever spoke a word of the incident to anyone else.

Natalia had agreed, mostly because she didn’t see the point in sharing with anyone else, partly because there wasn’t anyone to tell at all but Remus, and slightly because she didn’t want the others to know about the things Pierce had asked her; the disgusting things that had left puckered scars all over her heart.

Yelena launches into a sissonne and then twirls gracefully to the ground like a lotus spinning on pond water.

Natalia finishes her drink and pours herself another.

“I wouldn’t,” a voice says, “that’s strong stuff.”

Natalia stiffens. She tries to smooth away the edges of her surprise as she turns, like she’d sensed him there all along even when she hadn’t, and it makes him laugh. “They said you needed more training, but I had no idea it was this bad.”

“Not everyone was born with eyes in the back of their skull,” Natalia snaps, rising. “Where the hell have you _been?_”

His eyes darken as his head tilts. “Pardon?”

“Oh,” her shoulders sag, “you don’t remember.”

“Remember…?”

Natalia scowls. “It’s nothing. What are you here for, anyway?”

“Just what I said,” he steps deeper into the room, “I’m here to train you. They figured a mission would be good for you. How does Tokyo sound?”

Natalia forgets to be mad. It’s been a very long time since she’s left the facility. Still, she doesn’t want him to see her excitement, and especially not the sliver of fear that sparks inside.

“Fine,” she says, and storms past him out of the room.

.

“So tell me.”

Natalia stiffens. “Tell you what?”

“How will you do it?”

Thank god, an easy question. Natalia scans the building—twenty stories tall at least, lanes of glass slatted by silver beams. Expensive, high-security; a piece of cake to get inside of. She starts with that.

“And then?” the wolf asks.

“Then I kill them.”

He considers her. “How?”

“There are a number of possibilities,” she says, confused, “maybe I drown the wife in the bathtub, or shoot the husband in the back of the head and make it look like a murder-suicide. I don’t know yet.”

“Good,” he says, reaching into his pocket for the cigarettes he had made them stop for. “It’s good that you don’t know. Rolling with the punches is half of the job. You make it look natural because it _is _natural.”

This is not the way they teach them in class. There, Natalia has always been told to be surgical about the way she kills; quick, clean, quiet. Spiders hunt best in the dark.

But the wolf is loud. The wolf’s methods are primitive and chaotic. The wolf leaves a trail of blood in his wake but no prints to prove he was ever there at all.

“We’ll come back tonight,” he says as he exhales a cloud of smoke. “Make sure to pack light.”

.

Later, Natalia stands above the unmoving body of a Japanese diplomat.

“We have to move him,” the wolf says. “Why do we have to move him?”

“Livor mortis.”

“Correct.”

He grabs one end and she grabs the other, though he could probably carry the little man all on his own without even breaking a sweat. They will take him to the bathroom, they will make it look like he shot himself instead of being smothered by a pillow during a nap.

“I feel relieved,” Natalia whispers, as they set him on the toilet.

“Relieved?”

“That the wife wasn’t here. I feel relieved that I didn’t have to kill her.”

She likely shouldn’t be telling him this considering he is not her friend anymore. He is just a man with the same face. They took away everything that made him Remus and turned him feral once more.

But she can’t help it. She feels… safe around him. Too safe.

He considers her with those dark eyes, the ones that never stop smouldering with eternal fury and anguish.

“Why are you telling me this?”

Natalia’s cheeks burn. “I… Is it normal? Aren’t we supposed to take joy in killing? I should be… disappointed, shouldn’t I?”

The wolf breathes out a sigh.

“They don’t get to decide the way that you feel. They didn’t build your mind from scratch.”

_They built yours, _she thinks, but does not say.

“Do you think it will affect future performances?”

He shrugs. “I wouldn’t worry. You’re good at what you do.” Then he pauses. “It’s a damn shame.”

“Why is that?”

Natalia sees his face scrunch in confusion, like he himself doesn’t quite realise why he said that. “Just remember to tilt his head forward after you shoot him. I’m going to wipe the bedroom.”

.

The end of his cigarette glows orange in the dark. Natalia rolls onto her back. “Could you not do that? It smells. Besides, cigarettes cause cancer.”

There comes a rough, choked coughing fit. The wolf flicks on the bedside lamp and the hotel room floods with sudden yellow light. “They _what?_”

.

1999

.

It happens during combat training.

Natalia is knocked to the floor by Yesfir, and for a moment it looks like she is not going to get up again. It is only at the last second that she gathers her wits and finds her opening.

They keep fighting until one of them is dead.

Natalia has trained Yesfir since the girl was nine. They are sisters. Or, they were. Now her body lies unmoving on the mat, her neck bent at an awkward angle, and Natalia looks up just in time to see the Winter Soldier duck out of the room.

The other girls clap. Madame B claps. The wolf, however, looks sickened as he leaves.

Natalia tries not to think about it. He is not her friend anymore. They took Remus away years ago and she has long since learned to live without him, to fight without him, to kill without him.

She doesn’t need him.

But her stomach curls with dread anyway.

“You did good,” Yelena tells her later, in the showers. They are alone and the steam curls in the air around them.

Natalia’s razor pauses midway up her calf. “I almost bit it,” she says.

“But you didn’t.”

“But I almost did,” Natalia retorts, “and that shouldn’t be happening anymore.”

Yelena snorts as she towels off. “Do I have to remind you that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never become the robot you so badly want to be?” she shakes her head fondly, but Natalia knows it’s all a facade. “You’re human. Humans make mistakes.”

You’re just glad it made you come off better, Natalia thinks, but would rather not have to kill again today by starting a fight with Yelena; she holds her tongue. “Scram, would you?” she says instead. “I’d like to finish alone.”

.

Hours later, she wakes to the feeling of metal cutting into her wrists.

Natalia’s eyes shoot open, half expecting to see Yelena standing over her bed. Instead it is him: the wolf, eyes dark and face wide open. He is fiddling with the cuffs that chain her to her bed.

Natalia sits up as much as she can. “What are you _doing?!_”

“Getting you out of here,” he hisses back.

“_What?!_” It takes everything to keep her voice low so as not to wake the others. “Are you out of your _mind_?”

He stills. Fixes her with a stare that passes right through her, like he is looking past her paper skin, past the steel walls around her heart, right into her rose-petal soul. “I don’t have a mind,” he says softly, sadly. “Not anymore.”

Natalia can only look back. She swallows. “Are you… James?”

His mouth opens and closes, like he himself does not know the answer. “I think—a little. I’m not sure.”

Natalia knows all about James Barnes. After Florentia had confessed to the existence of a file, she had found it for herself and devoured every page, committed every fact to memory. She could test him now, see how much he remembers.

But their position is too precarious. They have no time.

He knows this, too, and finishes unlatching her handcuffs. Natalia rubs at her reddened wrists cautiously.

“Why do you want to leave?”

“Because this place isn’t…” he shakes his head. “They made you kill your friend today, Natalia. Doesn’t that seem the least bit _wrong_ to you?”

It does, though it shouldn’t. It’s just the way things are, isn’t it? They have fights like this at the end of every round of training to pick out the weakest links. Yesfir was weak, so she died.

But she had also been an excellent linguist; she had been a good friend, a sister like none of the others. She was quiet and she listened, and there is a part of Natalia—a very large part—that doesn’t find any of it fair. Why should any of them have to die? Why should any of them have to do this at all?

The idea of living any other way has never really occurred to her. In her darkest moments her mind would begin to stray in that direction and she would quell the thoughts before they ever began. But now, in the dark barracks, she starts to consider it:

Living the way normal people do, or even forever on the run—because Pierce and the others would never let them just leave. They will have to fight their way out and keep fighting, keep running forever.

But isn’t that better than a life of following?

She whispers her damnation, “How will we do it?”

.

They creep through the black hallways. James does the killing and she keeps close to him. Even when she tries to help he stops her, like he doesn’t want her to have to take any more lives, like the thought of it makes him sick.

He leads her from the dorms all the way to the airplane hangar where they keep the jet for missions. It will break their cover; opening the door without the authorisation code will trigger the alarm, and the noise alone will be enough to alert the nearby patrols.

But it’s their only option, unless they should brave the snow.

It seems so simple. She wonders why they never tried it before, why it never even occurred to her before to want to escape.

They have almost successfully reached the south wing of the facility when all of the lights flicker on at once, and then comes a storm of thudding boots.

Natalia grabs the wolf’s metal arm. “How did they—?”

“I don’t know,” he growls.

It doesn’t really matter how, anyway. It just matters that they are here now. Natalia grabs the handgun from the holster on the wolf’s thigh, and then they are both fighting, both killing—

Natalia wavers.

One second. One second and it costs her everything.

Because they’re not just fighting the guards.

They are fighting the girls, too.

And Yelena takes that second, the one where their eyes meet. She grabs Natalia by the wrist and though Natalia fires, the bullet goes wide; hand to hand they paint each other with bruises and then Yelena’s arm is around Natalia’s throat and the cold barrel of a gun is pressed to her temple.

“Stop!”

All eyes fall to the wolf, to James, whose metal hand crushes a guard’s throat and then falls limp as soon as he sees her. “Fuck,” he hisses. “_Fuck_.”

“That’s right,” says Pierce, stepping out into the open. There is not a hair out of place, not a speck of lint on his three-piece pinstriped suit. It is such a contrast to the wolf, wild and rabid and bloody. “You know, Soldier, I took a chance on you. I believed that you would be a great asset to this program, and for a long time, you were. These… malfunctions, however—I’m tired of them. I have had enough. I suppose you could say I’ve decided to cut you from the regime.”

_Do you know what happens to the girls they cut? _

_Do they kill them? _

_Yes._

“No,” Natalia shouts. “You can’t—”

“Silence!” Pierce grinds out. He is shaking with fury. “God, you. I should cut you too, if I had any sense. It is only for your value that I keep you now.”

Yelena stiffens against her, like this proclamation displeases her. She had been hoping Natalia would be cut, hadn’t she? Odds are, she had been the one to alert the guards in the first place. She must have heard them in the barracks.

Pierce shakes his head, disgusted. “We’ll have to make a lesson out of this. Seize the Asset. Come.”

.

Yelena marches Natalia. They both know that of the two of them, Yelena is the better fighter. Natalia also knows not to risk it, because even should she manage to kill Yelena, there are about twenty more guards around, not to mention there’s nowhere to run to.

So she keeps quiet and complacent until they reach the room.

Natalia had thought that maybe they would be bringing her to solitary; instead, she is brought to a large chamber with only one chair.

At the sight of it, the wolf starts to struggle; even bound, even muzzled, he manages to crack the skull of one of his handlers and break the arm of the other, but they are just replaced. It’s futile.

They strap him down and it’s really his muffled cries that do it, the ones borne of pure panic; those, and Yelena’s snort.

“Let him go,” Natalia snaps. “Just—kill me instead—”

That is not what she is supposed to say under any circumstances. They are never meant to present themselves like a lamb to a slaughter; they are meant to fight with their last breath, to sacrifice who they must in order to come out on top.

“I don’t want either of you dead,” Pierce says. “It’s your compliance I’m after—your absolute, unwavering loyalty. I have to obtain that by any means necessary. There’s a simple solution for him. For you…”

He trails off, looking her up and down.

“It’s time you learned what happens when you step out of line.”

Natalia won’t resort to begging. She won’t cry. She won’t let him know about the hurt or the fear or the fury.

“Now!”

There is a sharp whirring sound that hurts Natalia’s ears and then the wolf is rigid—James has turned to stone, back arching against the chair, eyes blown wide, a silent scream swallowed by the dark mask they put on his face.

Over a loudspeaker, she hears words swathed in static: “_Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car._”

The whirring stops. The wolf goes slack.

Pierce walks up to him without any hesitation. He rips the mask off easily. “Soldier,” he says. “Ready to comply?”

“Ready to comply,” the wolf agrees, in a voice as dead as Natalia feels.

.

2009

.

A decade.

Ten years until their paths cross again and by that point, the worst of the Room has faded from memory. There are echoes, still, of what her life was before. She spends most of her days trying to actively forget.

The rest is about atonement.

This—what she’s doing right now, hands curled tight around the steering wheel of a nondescript white sedan, listening to Tarasvina Kozak scream—is the life she chose for herself.

The car swerves off the road as Natasha loses control of the vehicle. It rolls, and Dr. Kozak clutches at her heart with wide eyes, breath stolen.

Natasha sees it all in slow motion. She watches the bulletproof glass crack, sees the world turn upside down.

Then everything is still. Dr. Kozak sobs and swearing in Ukrainian but Natasha can barely hear her over the car horn that won’t stop blaring.

She fiddles with her seatbelt until it comes undone. “Dammit,” she hisses, landing without grace. She grunts with every movement.

“Help me!” Dr. Kozak shouts.

“I’m helping,” Natasha insists. “I’m helping.”

Someone shot out their tires. That’s all she can think: someone shot out their tires while Natasha was driving sixty miles an hour. It’s impossible, it’s ridiculous.

She gets onto her stomach and carefully holds out the rear view mirror. Natasha just barely catches a glimpse of the tree line before the glass is shot and shattered.

“Fuck,” she hisses.

They need to get out of here, but Natasha has no idea how the hell she’s going to manage that. She thinks quickly, thoughts flurried and red. 

“Listen to me,” Natasha says to Dr. Kozak, “I need you to stay close, okay? Hang on to me. Don’t let go. If I go down, you run, understand?”

“W-What are we doing?” Kozak asks.

Natasha swallows. She jerks her chin in the direction of the passenger door. “We’re very close to the cliff. I want to try and climb down.”

“Are you insane?!” Kozak demands. “We’ll fall! We’ll die—”

“And if we go out my side, we die too,” Natasha snaps. “It’s our only option, and we have to move quickly or he’ll try to blow us up while we’re still inside this damn car.”

Dr. Kozak considers it and then nods weakly. She shifts, allowing Natasha to climb over her and push the door open. The glass and the metal will shield them over the side. If they’re lucky, there might be at least a goat trail to cling to.

Natasha leans over. “Thank god,” she breathes. “Okay, grab my hand.”

They move slowly, but it still isn’t enough.

Truth be told, Natasha isn’t really sure how it happens. One moment she and Dr. Kozak are inching out of the vehicle, the next, her stomach is on fire and the woman she’s holding onto his dead and the man standing on the rocky roadside who’s face she can’t see is her brother.

“J-James,” she croaks, and then everything is dark.

.

2014

.

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

He knew him. He _knows_ him. He knows the man from the bridge. He knows, deep down, about _Bucky_.

Little pieces come back to him and it doesn’t feel like the first time, it feels like the fiftieth;

Hands, covered in grime, switching his grip and flipping a knife over and over, learning to catch it by the handle, by the point; learning to throw it, learning the exact weight and the center of its balance. The knife became an extension of his arm and on the handle were the words: MY REICH IS SUPERIOR.

Eyes that changed the way the sky does; grey like storms and sparking with angry lightning; crystal clear and gleaming with gold, scattered sunlight.

It comes to him in flashes, in waves; he breaks with them, bends with their will.

A body warm beside his own, breath against the back of his neck, a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach—_this is not the first time he’s remembered, he knows the man, he knows Bucky, he is—_

Ready to comply.

.

_Romlow said Bucky and I was a sixteen year old kid again in Brooklyn_—sixteen, he’d said. Why sixteen?

Is it because the memories are clearest then? When, just after his mother had died, Bucky would hover close, always there in Steve’s peripheries; a part of every waking moment? Is it because during the night he would roll over and find him there, like a tangible dream, breathing soft and slow, awake again with the slightest touch?

Is it because Steve had been sixteen when he realised he loved Bucky?

Is it because he’d been sixteen when he realised he couldn’t live without him?

Steve doesn’t know if he wants an answer to any of that. He just wants Bucky, plain and simple.

.

“I’m with you ’til the end of the line,” Captain America croaks out, and just like that, he’s not a stranger anymore.

He’s the kid Bucky pulled off his ass on the playground after he got knocked down by Allen Trent; he’s the kid who threw himself at fuckers twice his size and got knocked down flat over and over again and never gave up; he’s the kid whose back Bucky watched at all times.

Underneath the stars and stripes, it is _Steve_.

Why hadn’t he seen it before?

Soldier blinks and it goes away, mostly, but the feeling—the desire to protect, to save—it doesn’t leave him.

.

It’s still there as he wades out of the river dragging the big lug behind him. It’s there as he stands over Steve Rogers, panting, soaking wet, shaking.

It’s there, and it won’t go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading, and pls tell me what you thought!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here’s part 3!! it’s a long boi lol

  
_ Act Three _

_condemnant quo non intellegunt_

_11 October 2014_

_What I remember—_

_Frozen fields in Germany, muddy trenches wet with blood and water, standing on a riverbank with armour straps in my fists and your name on the tip of my tongue. I swallowed it, my heart. It burned._

_Some scrawny little shit on the school yard getting his ass kicked by a kid twice his size. We were eleven. I got a bloody nose. It was hot and it stung and ached but I didn’t care; I grabbed you by the back of your starchy white collar and yanked you far away from the rest of them, with their red smirks and black eyes. I asked myself why, and my answer was, I thought: because you can’t stick up for yourself, so someone has to right?_

_And after all, it’s not like you expected me to intervene. You’d let yourself get bashed into a pulp before you ever looked my way for help, you miserable fuck._

_And you always said thanks. You said it in the bathrooms, dabbing at my chin with a wet napkin and grimacing when it came away crimson. You said, “Thanks, Buck,” and “sorry, Buck.”_

_And I said: “Don’t worry about it. Just stuff it next time, would you?”_

_Then we crammed my nostrils with torn up paper and that’s how I went back to our grammar lesson. Our teacher curled her lip at me and you, fuck you, you laughed._

_Silver splinters across your face; the moonlight spilling through the cracked window pane. Resting in peace, wrapped in our sheets, smiling in sleep. Nineteen, I think that’s how old we were. That’s how old I was when I came home smelling like motor oil and I found you there, soft and small as anything, and I thought_ I love you.

_I crave you. I want to be nothing with you. I want to lie on my back beside you in that bed again and just breathe, just count our heartbeats while the words from the wireless wash over us like a symphonic static rainfall. I want it all back. I_ want. _ I_ remember.

_You, always you. Nothing else._

.

Bucky knows a few things for certain, and one of them is that he is a human being, real and his own, and that human beings need to eat.

So he’d hunkered down at the first place his nose led him to: a small stand in the middle of a mall selling something called falafel. For the first few bites Bucky is pretty sure he could live off of the stuff.

Then he feels a burning, like someone is staring. He looks up and catches the gaze of a kid sitting two tables away, eyes round and full of not fear (and how strange is that, really, to have a child look upon him not with fright or reverence or hatred) but wonder.

Bucky swallows. Ducks his head and, after a few seconds, glances up to see that the little boy with the copper curls has not let up.

Bucky knows a few things for certain. One of them is that he is a weapon, and weapons are dangerous. Weapons shouldn’t be kept around children.

Even so, the kid comes closer.

Bucky starts to gather his things at the first sign of movement. He sweeps his trash onto his tray and shoulders his bag and—

A hand tugs at the hem of his jacket.

“Your arm is metal.”

Bucky opens his mouth and closes it. This is how it always goes; only stupid people get caught, because they make stupid decisions. He doesn’t have time to acknowledge the existence of some random kid much less converse with him, but…

Something presses against the walls of his brain like someone is wrapping a belt around his skull. Bucky knows what that feels like: tight, warped, slick from the sweat and then sucking as it is rips away from his skin after hours and hours.

He supposes it only makes sense that he associates the sensation of recollection with eradication. One always followed the other, after all, and so naturally the flitting image of a freckle-faced girl with two plaits tied back in blue ribbons makes him flinch.

The kid is still waiting, expectant. There’s a bear tucked under his chin. It’s not the same as the ones from Bucky’s day: plain and brown and boring, he supposes.

“Your parents,” are the first words out of his mouth, falling flat like an avalanche of snow along a slate mountain face. “Where are they?”

The kid points. “Over there.”

There are two women sitting under the shade of an indoor umbrella. One of them is on her phone, absently listening as the other talks. She is animated, moving her hands around, laughing mid-sentence. Whatever she’s talking about, she’s much more enthused about it than the woman she’s with.

Bucky frowns.

“Did you need something?”

With two parents more wrapped up in themselves than their own kid, to the point where they haven’t even noticed him wander off, it’s no wonder he’s gravitated toward the first stranger to look his way.

But the kid shakes his head. “You look sad,” is what he says next.

It takes Bucky a split second to stitch together a definition for the word sad. It is gloomy, grey, something settling black and heavy in the pit of his stomach. It is poison in his veins weighing him down like lead.

“Oh,” stumbles out of him, and then, “what?”

A shrug. “I thought maybe you could use a friend. Mom says to always try to help other kids when they’re upset.”

“I’m not…” he sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m not upset.”

“Then why does your face say you are?”

And just like that, superimposed over the little boy’s face is someone else: a knit brow, a delicate frown, red curls brushing his fingertips as he cupped her chin, “Your face says you’re a liar. Are you lying to me?”

“I’m fine,” Bucky says now. The memory kick starts him. He grips the strap of his duffel tighter. He jerks his chin toward the boys mothers. “Your parents will worry.”

“Oh,” says the boy, like this wasn’t the outcome he’d expected. And then, “wait!”

Bucky stops. Turns. Watches with a stupefaction as the boy raises his arms and holds up the stuffed bear. It’s fur is red, and there are thin lines of gold running down its torso, arms, legs, and face. “Iron Man protects everyone.”

“You think I need protecting?”

It’s almost laughable. That’s the word Bucky would use if he remembered what it meant.

The kid, however, isn’t amused so much as suddenly grim. “If you’re not sad, you’re scared. Iron Man will keep you safe.”

Safe. Bucky knows what the word means, but can’t remember the feeling.

He looks down at the bear. “You’re sure?”

The kid nods. “I don’t need it anymore, anyways. I’m getting a big brother next month.”

Bucky blinks. “...Congratulations?”

That ears a wide, gap-toothed smile. “Don’t lose him!” is called over his shoulder as he returns to the table. The women don’t even look up as he slides back into his seat and picks up his food again.

Bucky examines the bear as he walks away. At the centre of its chest is a threadbare circle, white and blue. The stitching of its mouth give it a stern sort of expression. It’s not at all the sort of thing he would ever have looked at and wanted, but as it is, he unzips his bag and shoves the bear inside.

.

The apartment is small. There is a bedroom and a bathroom and a twelve by eight living space. The mirror above the sink is cracked. The floor boards creak. One of the windows is sealed permanently shut.

But it’s quiet. At around six, the street floods with kids. They don’t play hopscotch like they used to, but they still laugh and that’s something. He cracks the good window at that hour and lights a cigarette, watching the sky fade from blue to purple to black like a bad bruise.

The practise of turning oneself into a ghost is an art and Bucky, after all these years, is an artist. He knows how to smudge the charcoal to shape the shadows around him, knows how to use the light to hide his face, knows how to blend and obscure and fade into the background. It is second nature by now.

It occurs to him one night, cracking open a can of _Fancy Feast _for the stray that won’t stop hanging around, that Bucky knows how to _survive. _

That does not mean that Bucky knows how to _live. _

And so, he does his best to change that in what ways he can without giving himself away.

He spends the mornings perched on the fire escape with a paper back novel he usually only thumbs a few pages through. He wastes the day at dog parks watching labs circle each other and bark. Sometimes they come up to him, and when their owners are far enough away or distracted, they’ll sit beside him like they can feel his aches, like if they curl up close enough the current of his pain will pass to them and they can share the brunt of it, if only for a minute or two.

Bucky keeps the bear. He doesn’t know why, exactly, but doesn’t really question it either. One night he sets it on the floor in front of the apartment door where it sits in constant wait like a stuffed sentry. There is no one around to laugh at the audacity of the scene but him, and even so he doesn’t stop.

The library in the city is quiet. Bucky usually drifts to the backs of the stacks, scanning spines for anything that sparks his interest. Usually it’s the classics, because they’re like home. He will read the words and know, deep down, that he’s read them all before.

He knows ‘_There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well._’ Knows that when he read it for the first time he was perched on a bed in a room someplace that could be home or elsewhere, and he had snorted, and he had thought about who he really loved.

He’d even read it aloud and he’s certain he had been reading the words to someone but there is no face, no name. A gap in the memory, one that closes with the words, _I sure as hell don’t think well of you, you fuckin’ punk. _

It’s on a nondescript Saturday afternoon that something other than a classic catches his eye.

Bucky slides the well worn biography out of its place and scans the cover. There’s a picture of a man: dark eyes, sharp and calculating and familiar, somehow, beyond having glimpsed them before in tabloids and on TV.

Bucky sandwiches it between metal and rib cage and the book stays tucked there even as he’s leaving, because even if he likes the librarian here a whole lot, he won’t be caught dead reading _this shit._

.

** _Reverse Engineering the Engineer: A Biography on Anthony Edward Stark_ **

by Nathan Singh

When a lot of us think of Tony Stark, we imagine a figure of staggering height; someone larger than life with enough energy to fill an entire room. This isn’t far from the image presented to me in the brightly lit high-rise penthouse the man calls home, seamlessly integrated into Stark Industries’ base for New York operations.

The place is just as clean, shiny, and new as the rest of the tower. The decor only adds to the grandeur; pieces more expensive than my life insurance policy dot the living room the way we toss throw pillows into our own for a jazzy pop of color. Ralph Baccera’s _Lidded Vessel,_ Jackson Pollock's _No. 19,_ and Joan Mitchell’s _Fields IV_ are just a few of the outlandishly lavish works to pepper the space.

Tony Stark himself is sitting across from me, reclined on a white leather couch (because he doesn’t have to worry about stains like the rest of us peasant folk) in a three-piece Tom Ford suit. I ask him, jokingly, why he isn’t wearing one of his own design.

**STARK:** Oh, would that have been acceptable? [smirks] See, I wanted to, but I got shot down by my CEO.

**SINGH: **That’s too bad.

**STARK: **Isn’t it? There are days I regret handing over my company to someone who runs it better.

**SINGH:** Yeah?

**STARK: **Yeah. Would be nice to go buck-wild a bit.

**SINGH:** Tell me more about how you came to that decision. I mean, handing over the reigns right after you had completely derailed the direction your company was headed in—that’s a big move. What prompted it?

**STARK: **[shrug] I believe that man should wield only so much power as he deserves. For me, those are the things that I under-stand inside and out. The things that come from me. My suits, my technology. Everything else is just conjecture. It doesn’t interest me. Better lay the scepter in the hands of someone who won’t use it as a back scratcher, right?

**SINGH: **[laughs] Right. Do you think your father would agree with the course of action you’ve taken in regards to the company he founded?

**STARK: **I think that no matter what I would have done it. It was the right thing to do at the time and I stand by the decision. I don’t see the point in postulating the opinions of dead men.

**SINGH:** Of course. On that same note, though, do you think things would have gone the same way had he lived?

**STARK:** Geez, is this book about me or my old man?

**SINGH: **You’re the focus, of course, but my goal is to retrace all of your steps, dissect why and how you did the things that you’ve done. The starting point is here, now, today; the end goal is to unravel the whole of your origin story. Parents usually play a part in those.

**STARK: **Well if it’s alright with you, I’d like to refrain from that line of questioning for now.

**SINGH: **Damn. Right before I get to the good stuff?

**STARK: **I think you’ll find there’s not much good in the stuff.

**SINGH:** If you let me.

**STARK: **If I let you.

.

“Tell me about the forties.”

Steve’s hands are covered in white powder and wrapped in gauze. He remembers a time when they were stained black with charcoal instead, when the drawings bled from him. But Steve doesn’t draw to pass the time anymore. Instead his knuckles are split and red and while it stings, it doesn’t bother him.

He chances a glance at Natasha. She’s made a home for herself on the gym floor, surrounded by files and a nursing steaming mug of green tea. She’s been on something of a kick lately, coaxing him into sampling chai and jade and citrus honey, and no matter how many times he tells her it all just tastes like dirt to him, she keeps trying.

“The forties,” he repeats, wiping sweat from his brow just so she can’t see his face. He’s aware, from the flicks he’s managed to catch, that a lot of people look at the forties and think ditzy jazz music and bubbling champagne towers and love letters. They’ve put a romantic lense on a time that, to Steve, just _was_.

It was dirt under his nails and a constant dread coiling in his stomach that he still can’t shake these days, years later. It was icy air that cut his lungs to ribbons; beating hearts were all that mattered, a pulse under the fingertips. He doesn’t see it the way they do: a facade of big-print propaganda posters, pinafores, and pin-up curls.

He just sees the constants. The sun rose in the east and set in the west then and it still does now; people are afraid of things and they want someone to hide behind, a figurehead, a leader. It was him then and these days it’s _all of them_, the whole team.

So he says, “I don’t know. Tell me about now.”

“Come on,” Nat presses. “Give me something to work with.”

“What, are you writing a novel?”

“No, not that I wouldn’t be excellent at it.” He snorts. “It’s just that sometimes I have a hard time fitting you in with all of that. Can’t quite picture you in the World War II getup.”

Steve hums and begins to unwrap his hands, knuckles already healing. He thinks about it, about who he was just five years ago, about where the world was and how it’s changed. Everything went from muted and sepia-toned, to vibrant high definition colour.

“There were a lot of buttons,” he remarks after a moment. “On the dress uniform, I mean. And it was hot.”

“Oh, I’ve seen the pictures.”

His lips curl up into an almost-smile. “I meant—”

“I know.”

Beyond that, he can’t think of much. Nothing, at least, that he wants to say out loud. Every memory comes chained by a dead weight, dragging it down into the abyss of a black sea.

Friday nights at the cinema when the movies still played on reels.

Standing on the docks with his neck craned, and in those days he was still so short he had to raise himself to his tiptoes just to see over the Panama hats; waiting, hands clenched, muttering one name under his breath over and over like a prayer, an invocation; _Bucky_ was his sermon, _James Buchanan Barnes_ he preached to the choir of his scuffed up shoes. _Bucky Bucky Bucky, _come back and be okay.

“Steve,” Nat says.

His attention snaps back to her. She’s watching him carefully the way she always does these days, like he’s a stone one tremor away from falling over the edge.

Steve forces a smile which is about as useful as drawing one on where Natasha Romanoff is concerned. That look only deepens, the crease between her eyebrows cresting to a half moon.

“Have you been getting enough sleep, lately?”

“Have you?”

She doesn’t take the bait. Regardless, he knows he has a point: how can any of them sleep? She, more than any of them, has to understand the nocturnal maze of navigating through two lifetimes worth of horror. No, she was never frozen like a TV dinner and then microwaved, served to America steaming and _good as new! _

But she’s lived two lives. Even without reading the files, he’s picked up little bits and pieces.

In dreams he sees the things they’ve all suffered together. He sees an inky black well in the sky and he sees a gleaming metal arm winking in the sun, and then he sees the grit of before, the rain fire of bullets, the collective breath of an entire regiment, of an entire nation, held in anticipation of the end. Be that of the war or of the world, it didn’t matter. One way or another it would come.

“I sleep,” he says. Puts on his jacket and zips it up over a faded Henley shirt. She doesn’t move to collect her own things. “As much as I can.”

“And how much is that?”

“_Romanoff_.”

“_Rogers_.”

He sighs. “I’m gonna be okay. Trust me on that.”

She nods even though she doesn’t, probably never will. She may trust the fate of entire cities in his hands, entire worlds, but trusting him with himself? That’s a different story altogether.

“Go home, take a shower,” she lists off, just to remind him. “Get something to eat—and by that I don’t mean order in, I mean cook. That always calms you down.”

Steve smiles for real this time. “What about you?”

“Work.”

“Anything exciting?”

“Nothing of note. Go develop a self care routine for me.”

Steve shakes his head as he walks away, leaving her alone in the empty gym. “Don’t overdo it, Romanoff,” he calls over his shoulder.

“When have I ever?”

.

Bucky Barnes has been staring at the front doors of the tower for an hour now. Well, forty minutes and thirteen seconds. He had distracted himself for a brief twenty with a visit to the nearest falafel cart.

The food is long gone now. Even without it there are a million and one reasons not to walk into the building.

His feet carry him anyway. He walks right into the lobby and half expects to be tackled the second the doors swing shut behind him, but no one glances his way. It’s bustling with employees, coming and going and staying.

Each and every one of them has a laminated card hanging around their necks.

It takes Bucky five minutes to get his hands on one with high enough clearance. Four of those minutes are him standing on a toilet seat waiting for some schmuck to walk in and get his lights punched out. He is careful, though, not to hit too hard. He is _always_ careful these days.

Bucky takes the security pass. He hovers for a moment, considering the briefcase on the ground; grabs it, dumps its contents out, and carefully transfers his two items from his duffel to it before he strides out.

The light flashes green when he requests admittance to the elevator. An automated voice repeats the floor he selects: seventy-two, the R&E department.

Again, no second glances, but first ones earn him slight frowns, wary berths. He keeps walking. Ducks into the stairwell. Climbs eight flights and bursts out onto the helipad landing zone.

From there, it’s pretty much a straight shot down onto Tony Stark’s living room balcony.

He jumps and rolls as he lands, when before he might have dropped solid and steady, carelessly breaking the bones in his legs and cracking the concrete.

He’s done this a thousand times before. Not with this exact place, of course, but breaking in; slinking in the darkness through another person’s home. He doesn’t remember the names of the occupants or their faces or why he had done what he’d done other than it was simply part of the mission objective.

The lack of hesitancy he feels stepping over the threshold into the seemingly empty penthouse should be alarming, but it is ingrained within him now to simply _do_—_fuck what it takes, just get it the fuck done and go._

That philosophy becomes less simple, however, when he lays eyes on Tony Stark.

The man is walking with his head down, eyes on a tablet, muttering to himself. It’s technobabble and Bucky tunes it out, simply scanning him. Three piece Tom Ford suit, neatly clipped goatee, small scars in various places. A man like him should not have scars.

“Stark.”

He stops dead. Slowly, carefully raises his eyes from the device in his hands and then, just as slowly, speaks: “Um… _who?_”

“Barnes,” Bucky says. “I’m—”

“Ah, yes. James Buchanan. Sergeant Barnes. Pardon my French, but what in the fresh _fuck_ are you doing here?”

Bucky feels suddenly awkward. “I have to ask you for a favour.”

“If it’s to see Steve, I’m afraid I can’t arrange it. Not after you, you know, tried to murder him.”

“I didn’t try to—” Bucky stops. Swallows the words because they’re lies. He did. He _did_. Five blows to the rib cage, twice as many throws between them, three bullets, he knows, he had counted, he had _tried_.

Tony Stark is watching him. “You were the one who dragged him out of the river, weren’t you?”

Bucky feels his face flush like Stark just exposed his darkest, deepest secret, and maybe in a way he sort of did.

“I was wondering about that,” Stark goes on. He remains stationary, as does Bucky. “He wasn’t eager to talk, but I read the reports. Cap’s built, I know, but wounds like that? A _fall_ like that? It’d take… well, _you_, to save him.”

Bucky swallows, but his throat stays dry.

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“No?”

“No.” Bucky kneels, laying the briefcase on the floor to remove its contents. When he looks up again, there is a bright red gauntlet wrapped around Stark’s hand and forearm. “Um.”

Stark shrugs. “Safety first. Is that a teddy bear?”

Bucky bites his tongue. He nods and pulls the bear all the way out of the briefcase, then thrusts it into the space between them like it’s a transactional token, a sacrificial ornament. “I’ve been reading about you.”

“Well that makes two of us,” Stark mutters, holding the Iron Man bear by the tip of its ear like it’s coated with contagion.

Bucky experiences the urge to roll his eyes and attempts to name the feeling attached to it. _Exasperation_, isn’t it? He presses forward.

“It says in this book that your parents died in a car crash.”

Stark balks, gaze flying up from the bear. “What?”

Bucky begins to read the paragraph he’d marked with a hot pink sticky note. “‘_And like most tragedies, this one struck the way lightning does: sudden, blinding, sending a current of fear through the bodies of their loved ones, no doubt. It’s fitting, then, in so much as such a horrific event can be, that it was raining that night. The road was slick after an eight-month drought—_’”

“Yes,” Tony Stark says quickly, cutting Bucky off short. “Yes, they died in a car crash.”

“No they didn’t.”

The man freezes. Bucky can see the way his eyes shutter, the way his jaw sets. “No? Then enlighten me, Mr. Barnes: how _did_ they die?”

“I killed them.”

He remembers: orange headlights on the road, the sound of an engine revving, the kickback of his glock. Their faces are indistinguishable in his mind’s eye; but the circumstances paint the picture for him and he _remembers_.

He remembers the way Maria Stark had cried. Remembers that her tear burned like acid against his skin, hot on his hand, so hot it should have steamed.

He remembers the blood against the black iced road.

Stark hasn’t blinked. He hasn’t breathed. For the first time in a while Bucky finds himself actually taken off guard when the repulsor charges and fires, knocking him back against the wall.

At least it hadn’t been the windows, right?

And it’s not exactly a _surprise_.

Bucky grunts. His hair obscures his vision in vital moments and though he reaches up to push it away, the gauntlet has already wrapped around his vibranium arm to hold it in place.

Bucky raises his head, dazed.

Tony Stark’s eyes are black. Bucky can’t remember the last time he saw someone look so furious that wasn’t his own reflection.

“How?” is the first thing Stark asks.

“I…”

“_How?_”

Bucky debates whether or not it’s worth it to fight. He could probably take Stark. But that’s not what he came here for, is it?

No, this is about atonement.

“I don’t know,” he finds himself saying. “I can’t… I can’t remember all of it.”

“You can’t _remember?_”

Stark’s voice is a cocktail of fury and bitterness, raw and jagged. He’s outraged that Bucky should dare forget the dying moments of his parents; surely they deserved to at least haunt his dreams, surely their faces are branded onto his subconscious never to be forgotten?

But there’s only one face there and it does not belong to Howard or Maria.

“I didn’t _want_ to,” is all Bucky can say. “I didn’t even… I don’t know how to explain_—_”

“Well _think of something._”

“They made me,” is all he can manage, and it’s a far cry from what’s needed. “I didn’t want to, I never would have—I’d never even _met_ them—”

“That’s right,” Stark agrees. “You’d never _met them _and you’re telling me you _murdered them?_”

Bucky closes his eyes. Opens them again, choosing to look right at Stark. No walls, no anger, just sorry, _I’m real sorry, I never would have if I had the choice—_

“Please,” he whispers. “I know you’re angry—”

“Don’t you _dare_ try to tell me how I’m feeling.”

“Okay,” Bucky nods. “Okay, I’m sorry. Listen, I’m here. I’m not fighting. It’s not a trick. I just… I _remembered_. I was reading the book because this kid came up to me in the mall and gave me that fucking bear and told me you keep people safe and I thought—fuck, it doesn’t matter—”

“You’re god damn right it doesn’t,” Stark snaps.

“I just—”

“_Why?_”

Bucky blinks. It takes him a second to realise what Stark is asking. “I don’t know _why_. It was just what they woke me up to do, so I did it.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“I didn’t want to—”

“You’ve said that.”

Bucky shakes his head and it falls back against the cracked marble wall behind him. He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “You don’t have to believe me, but I _am_. I’m sorry for all of it.”

He waits for it, for another blast. Maybe in the face or in the heart, something fatal. It’s what he deserves, there’s no doubt about that. By all rights he should have been executed a thousand times over by now, or at least once for every life he took.

If only he knew the exact number.

Then, just like that, the pressure on his arm is gone. Tony Stark has stepped away from him and is staring down with something like disgust. “Get up.”

“What?”

“_Get up._”

Bucky scrambles to his feet. Stark gestures toward the couch. “Sit.”

He doesn’t question it a second time. Bucky sits. Stark faces him, still standing. He flexes his armoured hand. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Everything. Give me reasons not to kill you, and be snappy about it, it’s date night. I don’t wanna be cleaning up blood off the carpet on date night, Barnes, you got it?”

Bucky gapes. Then he snaps his mouth shut and just starts talking. He says all of the things that, for so long, have had no place to go.

“It all feels like one really long, really hazy fever dream. I was… I wasn’t me. I forgot everything. My name, who I was, my family,” _Steve_, “they took it all away. And they… they had their own methods for making sure I never got those memories back. Every time I would start to remember they would wipe me, put me in ice. It was part of the process. I would wake up, they would give me commands, then I would complete my mission. I would go to the extraction point, my handlers would pick me up, and they’d scrub me. They… they took me apart and—I was just a weapon to them.”

“A weapon.”

Stark stops. He finally lowers himself down to the seat opposite Bucky and studies him with a sharp intensity.

“What else did they do to you?”

“I—” Bucky breathes sharp, “they would strap me down into this chair and there… there were these words, and they’d only have to play them once before I…”

Stark frowns. “Trigger words,” he says. “They made you…?”

“Compliant,” Bucky finishes.

Stark nods and considers him again. Bucky can’t tell what he’s feeling. It’s like there’s a wall between them. Finally he says, “In Afghanistan, they waterboarded me. I’ve never told anyone that before, by the way. I suppose in some way that makes you special. Congratulations.”

“Thank you?”

“It’s not the worst thing another human being can do to another, but it’s still enough to make most people crack. Was what they did to you worse?”

“Yes,” Bucky breathes out, grateful for the frame of reference that allows him to stave from listing every tool they used, from recounting every recalibration session, the ones where the hours passed like _Hours_; where he screamed so much his voice just died and then the screams were inside of him.

“And they made you forget?”

“Yes.”

He keeps going. He tells Stark most everything he can recall, though it is, admittedly, very little. Stark sits in dark silence and just listens.

“So for seventy years you’ve been, what, in and out of a freezer, acting as HYDRA’s own personal zombie?”

Bucky nods. “I knew what I was doing, but it wasn’t _me_. It was like they built this other person inside my head and Bucky kept trying to grow back like crabgrass but they kept taking him—_me_—away again. Over and over.”

“That’s very convenient.”

Bucky bites back his frustration because it’s not like getting pissed off will go over well, no matter how many remarks he has to bite back, no matter how they burn his throat.

“I don’t know what else to say.”

“Why come here and tell me this?” Stark asks. “Was it for my benefit or yours?”

“I don’t see why there has to be an ‘or’ there.”

Stark squints. He is silent for another moment and then he leans back. The gauntlet on his hand retracts.

“You’re not going to kill me?”

“No, I’m not,” Stark says. “Nor will I turn you over. In return for my outrageous generosity, however, you’ll be staying here where I can keep an eye on you.”

Bucky frowns. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“Relax about it. Rogers is all the way in DC anyway. But you knew that, right? I didn’t just casually reveal compromising information?” He squints. “Whatever. Go take a shower or something. You look like a Yeti.”

.

The water runs down his back like rain. He’d used the shower-side panel to change the pressure because with his eyes closed, it reminds him of the countryside in France; the grass that reached mid-thigh, the mud beneath their boots, the pounding of their hearts.

It’s not that he wants to think of the war. It’s just that the time had been simpler. He’d gladly take the fucking front over the spacious, modern bathroom in the suite that Tony Stark provides for him.

At least that, at least war, he can understand.

Bucky stays under the stream for a long time. When he slips out there is no steam and the air is warm. The rack where the towels are kept is heated as is the floor.

It doesn’t relax him like it’s probably supposed to. He remains on edge, dresses quickly and in silence. The clothes fit well. He wonders how Stark had possibly sized him and procured anything to match his measurements in the time it took for Bucky to wash off, but he doesn’t bother questioning it.

From the bed, the bear watches judgmentally.

Bucky doesn’t care to stay in the room any longer like some caged animal. In fact the longer he’s there, the less he wants to stay at all. He strides over to the door and sees, now that it’s closed for the first time, that there is no knob. Dumbly he stares.

“What the hell?”

He could just throw his weight against it and it would no doubt give, but his body can’t seem to work right. He’s far too stunned by the implications of this damn door to even breathe.

There’s a button. There has to be a button someplace. He feels around, up the sides, along the top, and comes up short.

“Mr. Barnes,” says a voice, one that comes from above and all around him, “Mr. Stark is requesting entry into your quarters. Shall I let him in?”

Bucky opens and closes his mouth. “Yeah,” he stammers after a minute. “Let him in.”

The door slides open without sound. Bucky twitches, almost making a break for it. The hallway looks long and huge and Stark looks fuckin’ small. Why he doesn’t, Bucky can’t quite figure out.

“You’re keeping me locked up?”

“Locked up?” Stark repeats innocently. “What? Of course not.”

“The door wouldn’t open.”

“No? Hmm. Troubling. Perhaps a can of WD-40?”

Bucky is losing patience. “You can’t just keep me here like I’m your prisoner.”

Stark shrugs. He sets a tray of food down. It looks good: almost homemade, though he doubts Stark has ever roamed into a kitchen for anything more than liquor in his whole life. “I’m not. I won’t. I just have a few things I need to work out before I can justifiably let you back out onto the streets.”

It makes him sound like a dog. Some rabid motherfucker about to spread his disease to anyone who provokes him into snapping his jaws. He thinks maybe, just maybe, Stark ain’t wrong about that one. But it doesn’t feel like it these days. The things he’s done… he can’t quite reconcile them with the person he is. It’s like watching someone else’s dream. It feels foreign; a cancer invading his brain, wrapped around the most vital parts of his own history, eating away at the good memories and leaving only black and twisted dead things in its wake.

Stark isn’t paying him any mind. He perches on the bed, stretching his feet out, crossing his legs. Bucky knows he’s not really that easy around him, but he wants Bucky to think he is; to think none of the things he’s done matter. Bucky doesn’t know if that’s to keep is pride or an act of kindness, a small mercy in the midst of the torture that is breathing, carrying around this half-gone beaten heart.

“Ask me, then,” Bucky says. “Ask me your damn questions.”

“How much do you know about James Barnes?”

Stark’s eyes have turned dark. They’re hard like steel, reflecting the set of his resolve.

Bucky doesn’t know how to answer that. “I, uh,” he shakes his head. “Bits and pieces. It’s all bits and pieces these days. I remember it like I remember the missions: I see something, I hear something, and another piece comes back to me.”

“But you wouldn’t say you’ve got a whole picture going?”

“No,” Bucky says. He thinks of that thousand-piece jigsaw Steve had gotten for his tenth birthday, the one they’d dumped out on the floor of his bedroom and spent hours putting together. _Edges first, Buck, _Steve had said. _Takes longer the other way. _

Bucky has edges. He has jagged edges that cut the hands that touch him. He is hard, carved of stone, sculpted hollow.

Stark hums. “What other missions do you remember?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

“Classified?”

“Just… gone.” Bucky swallows. “They wiped me after each one. I remember one time I…” _I was so cold and I was wet and I realised it was blood, blood all over me, and they put me in the chair anyway and strapped me down and the leather stuck to my skin and when it burned it burned the blood too, and fuck it smells like tar, like tar in heat. _

Stark is still waiting, but Bucky can’t get the words out.

“My parents,” Stark says. “What do you remember? How sure are you that—”

“It was me,” Bucky says firmly. “I remember the–the glass against the ice. It was all cracked. And I remember…”

“Broken neck,” Stark says suddenly, standing. “My mother. They said she flew through the windshield. Wasn’t wearing her seatbelt or something. I remember thinking that was strange, because she always did. Even got on my case about it once or twice. And my father: blunt force trauma. The car door was missing, they said the whole thing flipped, but again, it didn’t add up. A lot about it didn’t add up to me, Mr Barnes, and so I think this whole time I knew it hadn’t just happened to them. It had been done to them.”

Bucky swallows back bile. Suddenly the food doesn’t look so good.

“Now you know who did it.”

“Yes,” Stark agrees. “HYDRA.”

Bucky looks up. “You can’t just—”

“Just what? Absolve you? Yes, I think you’ll find that I can. From what you’ve told me it doesn’t seem like you were anything more than a vessel for a long time.”

“But—”

“James Barnes didn’t kill my parents,” Stark says. “The Winter Soldier did, and the Winter Soldier is HYDRA’s creation. Seems to me he’s also dead.”

He buttons his waistcoat. Looks down at the food. “Eat. I made it myself, don’t insult your host.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky says without even thinking. He’s too stunned to watch his running mouth.

Stark looks at him. One corner of his mouth flicks up for the barest second. Then he steps toward the door and it slides open for him, easy as anything.

“I’ll check back in tomorrow morning. Maybe bring a friend. There’s a TV if you know how to use it.”

.

Steve cracks open a bottle and watches Sam cook for a minute. He’s humming something, a dish towel thrown over his shoulder, and thank fuck Steve finally lives with someone capable of putting a meal together. Making all the food on his own was getting a little stale.

Finally he says, “Smells good.”

Sam snorts. “You’re damn right it does. No one makes a Brunswick stew better than my mama, and this is her recipe.”

Steve will take his word for it. He sips his beer and lets the cool liquid burn against his throat. All it does is add to the acidity in his stomach, the churning that just won’t stop. Angry seas, icy waters, a cold that lives in his bones now.

Sam Wilson has a sixth sense, it seems, because right then he turns around and fixes Steve with a look as he points a spoon right in his face. It drips sauce on the floor as he says, “Don’t you start getting all down in the dumps, man. We have Antiques Roadshow to watch.”

Steve stares at the little red droplets on the tile. “I’m not down in the dumps.”

“Yes you are,” Sam insists. “I can smell it on you.”

Right. Bloodhound for sadness. Steve sighs, sets his beer down, and goes to wipe up the mess. “It’s no big deal.”

The burner clicks off. The next thing Steve knows, Sam is sitting on the floor across from him. Steve automatically settles back onto his haunches. His friend’s eyes consider him somewhat gently. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about pain, it’s that you’ve gotta feel it when you feel it. Otherwise it’s like a wound. It festers. You put it off long enough and it’ll get infected; then you’re not just dealing with you and what’s broken, but everyone around you that you broke, too.”

Steve frowns down at his hands. “I’m not broken.”

“No? Looks like it to me. Shit, Steve, sometimes I see you and I think, how can you still stand upright? I wonder how you breathe with it in your chest all day.”

The thing is, it’s not just in his chest. It’s in his bones and _fuck_ if they’re not grinding together so much they’re starting to crack. Sam is right. He can’t even stand up. He doesn’t even think he’ll be able to get up _now_, he thinks maybe just maybe he’ll stay here on this cold floor forever and it’ll swallow him and that—that will be okay—

“Hey, Steve,” a hand on his chest, firm pressure right over his heart, “remember to breathe.”

Right. Because lately, every now and then, he’s been forgetting to. The panic sucks all the air from his lungs and Steve’s throat constricts and he thinks, _shit, I’m having an asthma attack._

Then he remembers he doesn’t even have asthma anymore.

He realises he’s doing it to himself.

Sam keeps his hand in place until Steve’s chest rises and falls in tandem with his own. He leans back against the cabinets behind. “I know it’s hard,” Sam starts, and Steve wants to laugh. _Hard?_ It isn’t hard, it’s _impossible_. It’s like he’s been living with an ache in a limb and every time he screams about it they tell him there’s nothing fucking _there_, the pain is phantom, it’s all in his head. It’s impossible and it burns and it hurts fucking _everywhere_.

It’s like every time he remembers Bucky a piece of him dies, a piece of _them_.

“Steve?”

“I’m fine.”

“Man,” Sam says, and then he grabs Steve’s hands and gently unfurls them. Steve hadn’t even realised.

He stares down at the blood for a long second and then says, “Shit.”

“It’s okay,” Sam promises him. He stands up, wets a washcloth, and then presses it to Steve’s palms where the blood is pooling. There’s not much. He’ll heal in a half hour, tops, but god if it isn’t embarrassing. Still Sam says, “It’s okay,” again, and it really sounds like he means it.

The front door swings open without warning and there is Nat, sporting a cut cheek and a bruised eye and a smirk that falls as soon as she sees them.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Steve says quickly, because it’s true, isn’t it? Nothing happened at all, except he forgot and then he remembered again. “It’s fine. How was work?”

She scans him up and down, green eyes sharp. They flit to Sam questioningly and when she finds nothing, she shuts the door with a booted foot. “Quick. Gory. How about you?”

“Slow,” Sam says. “Gory.”

Nat scoops up his abandoned beer. She takes a long drink. “I never want a repeat of the shit I just had to deal with, got it?”

And though neither of them have any clue what she’s referring to, they nod. Sam even throws in a salute, which tugs her lips back up. She drifts over to the pot and Sam starts to tell her all about the ingredients and Steve’s chest gets heavy watching them. They’re his family and he loves them but they’re only a fraction of it, and this place is his home but it’s not his only one, and maybe that’s why it occurs to him just then.

“I think I’m gonna go to New York.”

Nat’s head whips around. Her eyes narrow almost suspiciously. “Why?”

Steve shrugs. “See Tony? I don’t know. I just need outta this city.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Sam says. “Don’t you, Romanoff?”

“No,” Nat says flatly. Then her face softens. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go chasing after ghosts, Rogers.”

And yeah, maybe that would stand up on its own if Bucky was a ghost. But he’s _not_. He’s alive and he’s somewhere and wherever that is, he’s probably _not okay_. It makes Steve want to scream with the unfairness of it all. He has nowhere to look, no direction to run in.

“He needs closure,” Sam disagrees.

“No I don’t,” Steve says, too sharply.

There’s nothing to close. The book is still open, half unwritten or more. Steve isn’t willing to see the end. He’s bristling and then Nat’s hand is on his arm, calloused but small. “Steve.”

Just his name. That’s all she says. The rest she tells him with her eyes.

“Pack a bag,” Nat concedes after a moment. “I’ll go with you.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Sunday,” she pushes, and that’s five days from now. Steve can wait five days. “I have a thing I need to handle in the meantime.”

Steve nods.

Five days. He can do that.

.

“I want to turn myself in.”

These are the words Bucky used to greet Tony Stark with after a night held hostage in his tower, like a fucking story book princess or some shit. It’s embarrassing, but Bucky does his best to look dignified.

Tony Stark blinks. Squints.

Then he says: “What the fuck did you just say?”

Bucky repeats himself. Tony Stark keeps staring. Then he nods once and steps toward the door. Bucky half believes him to be turning heel and walking away from the whole damn mess of it; but then he leans his head back around the corner and asks, “Are you coming or not, Barnes?”

Obviously, Bucky has no choice but to follow.

Stark brings him into the living area. It’s barren just as before. Some of the debris from their earlier scuffle has been cleaned, but there remains one long jagged crack in the plaster of the left hand wall. It’s glaring to Bucky, but Stark doesn’t grant it a second glance.

“Sit.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“Naturally. I’d never let a dog anywhere near furniture that expensive.”

Bucky finds himself rolling his eyes. Already he’s growing fed up with the way Stark speaks, moves, breathes; like he’s the focus of every moment, regardless of the fact that he fixates all of his attention on Bucky, even peripherally. Bucky can’t relax and neither can Stark. Their hair stands on end and the air smells of ozone; the space between them has electrified.

Stark serves them both a cup of coffee. It’s some pour over bullshit and Bucky wonders why the fuck people in the future can’t just drink a regular cup of joe anymore.

Begrudgingly enough he admits that it does taste pretty okay this way.

“So,” Stark claps his hands together, “you’ve come to an idiotic decision. Let’s backtrack together.”

“It’s not idiotic,” Bucky protests. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

It’s true. Ever since he got enough of himself back to imagine a world where he was not a machine, not a weapon; enough of _Bucky_ to entertain the idea of maybe one day really _being him _again.

But he can’t do that if he’s still trapped behind all the pile-up, behind the Soldier’s mask.

That’s what he tells Stark, who to his credit doesn’t laugh or really react at all behind the rim of his mug.

“You want a chance at freedom,” he assesses.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I want… I _don’t_ want to spend my life running. If it has to be anything, I want it to be a fight. I can fight better than I can run.”

“I disagree,” Stark says. “You’ve done a pretty damn fine job at evading our reach thus far, anyway.”

“They taught me how,” Bucky tells him, “or maybe… I don’t know. I think maybe they just gave me the know-how, dropped it right into my head or something. It’s like how I don’t ever remember being taught Russian but somehow I’m fucking fluent, you know? Like they just—”

“Uploaded new software into your brain,” Stark states. “Like a computer.”

Bucky shrugs. He doesn’t know too much about those, but he figures it’s one of those things where if he stood in front of one he’d know exactly what to do; muscle memory he never actually learned.

Stark eyes him over his cup as he sips. Then he says, “That’s disturbing, even for me.”

Bucky stares into the blackness of his own coffee and tries to think of how they’d do that. Maybe they strapped him down to a chair and showed him flicks, like the Mickey Mouse movies they reeled for the boys during the war to show ‘em how to clean up good. He imagines Commando Duck going step by step through how to turn yourself invisible, trying all different ways; dousing himself with a comically large pot of invisible ink and quacking miserably when he loses track of himself, too; crying so hard the ink wears away and then it’s just him in a puddle of tears.

“Mr. Barnes,” Stark says, suddenly reverting back to formalities once again; “I’ve been working on a piece of technology I believe might interest you.”

Bucky frowns. “Interest me how?”

Stark cocks his head. “Have you ever heard of memory retrieval therapy?”

.

“Fuck,” Stark breathes. It’s some time later; hours, years, Bucky doesn’t know. His head feels empty like it’s been drained of all that was left, what little memories he could hold to his name. All around him are scattered pictures salvaged from museums and photocopied from archives online.

Bucky sees a stranger in every one of them, and beside him, he sees Steve Rogers.

A printed placard reads: STEVEN GRANT ROGERS - BORN JULY 4th, 1917; SERVED HIS COUNTRY VALIANTLY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, DENOMINATED “CAPTAIN AMERICA”.

It speaks about him like he’s a dead man. According to all of the articles, everyone thought he was for a long time. Just like they thought his faithful sidekick, Sergeant James Barnes, had kicked it in the Alps after falling from a train.

Bucky died in the fucking Austrian _Alps_. They both died in the god damn cold, and how fitting is that after spending their whole lives freezing, only warm when they were together.

The last of the holographics recede and then it’s just them: Stark is on his knees in the mess of it, the chaos of Bucky’s life. The rest of the world knows more about him than he knows about himself. It makes his hands shake. What he just saw makes his whole body tremble like a strong wind could blow him away; he used to tell Steve that, _you’re such a fucking weed, Rogers, a southbound breeze could blow you over. _

And once, he had written (he knows this, he knows he had written it, had thought it, felt it all over everywhere): _I don’t believe in anything much these days but I’d get down on my knees and pray to you, to Aeolus, just to bring him here if only just for a second. I just need to see him again. _

And later, the white hot rage he felt that made his heart crack like overheated ceramic: _Fuck Aeolus and fuck you, too. _

“Can we use that one?”

Stark is looking at him like he’s never seen him before. In his eyes there is a newfound resignation, an underscore of something like respect, all flashing like black coal in the artificial light of the lab.

“We’ll use it,” Stark assures, “and if that doesn’t get you off there and then, I don’t know what the fuck will.”

.

**The Associated Press** @AP

Winter Soldier self-surrenders; trial date set for 8-23-14 apne.ws-ss/0ch239v

**The Washington Post** @washingtonpost

Tony Stark seen at courthouse ahead of Winter Soldier war crimes tribunal wpbreaking.img/334478

.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

The words fall out of him, heavy and flat like rocks onto dirt. Steve watches Tony grimace. “It was for the best.”

“For the—”

Steve finds that he simply can’t speak. There are no words. His hand flies to his mouth and then he’s turning away because there’s no chance in hell he’s gonna let them see him like this, when the fear is so palpable and the anger so patent. He’s shaking all over and Steve can’t rightly discern if it’s the horror of it all or the rage, or both, or something else he hasn’t even gotten around to feeling yet.

“Steve, you have to understand—”

“I don’t have to understand a _god damn thing!_” Steve screams. “What the hell do you mean, _for the best?_ Like you know what’s best?! Like you know _anything? _What the fuck, Tony? God, what the _fuck_.”

He clutches at his chest like he wants to rip his own heart out.

Natasha takes a step toward him with a hand raised and her eyes blown wide like he’s a skittish roe she’s trying hard not to scare away. “Steve, you need to calm down.”

It just makes him angrier.

“Don’t _fucking_ tell me what I need to do! Don’t tell me—don’t _ever_ tell me—”

Natasha’s palm makes contact with his skin and instead of the normal tranquil it just sets him on fire. Steve rips away. He starts to pace. “Don’t _fucking touch me_. What the fuck, huh? He was _here_. He was here and you both _knew_ and you didn’t bother to _say?_ What, like it wouldn’t matter to me? Like he isn’t—”

_Like he isn’t the most important thing in the world to me?_

Tony seems more intrigued than frightened or concerned, but Steve can still see it under the airy way he’s carrying himself, like this is just one of their regular Tuesday squabbles; _pass the pizza box, would you?_ and then, _fuck you, Rogers, get it yourself. _

But it isn’t, and that’s more kindling to the flames. They are popping and sparking in Steve’s stomach, turning his chest white hot.

“It was his request.”

Steve stops. “It was a stupid one. You should have told me anyway.”

“Steve—” Nat starts.

“You _should have told me anyway._”

“If it were you,” Tony cuts in, “would you have wanted us to tell him?”

Steve opens his mouth and then snaps it shut because he can think of a thousand and one times he had tried in vain to refuse Bucky’s help.

At thirteen, a rag full of snow against his busted lip, shaking his head when Mrs. Morris, the principal’s secretary, had asked him if he wanted to call anybody to pick him up and sign him out of school early. There had been no one to ring but Bucky in account of Steve’s Ma being so sick, but Bucky had work all day in the factory.

At seventeen, on the floor of that speakeasy they used to go sometimes because Katrina, the tender, let them drink during the day when it was so empty. He’d gotten into the wares when she was downstairs polishing silver and she’d found him wasted behind the counter. _Should I call Barney? _she’d asked, and Steve can still remember the sick feeling that had risen with the nickname, soft on her berry painted lips. He’d told himself it was just the whiskey but god, he still doesn’t want to know when she’d started calling him that, if it had been during a night sometime when they were _alone_ and _together_.

But this is different. This is different than being beat up or drunk. This is life and death. This is knowing that Bucky would have, _has_, moved Heaven and Earth for Steve; because that’s what they do. It’s devotion of cosmic proportions and Steve—god, Steve is so angry he wants to salt the Earth now, he wants to scream up into the Heavens why, _why_ do you keep giving him back to me only to take him away again?

“That’s what I thought,” says Tony, and the next thing Steve knows he’s shoving him, pushing him down and straddling his waist; Tony throws his arms up, managing only a hit or two in the midst of the pummels Steve delivers.

Cold hands wrap around Steve’s biceps and yank. Nat isn’t strong enough to haul him off, but she does pull a hit off course. Steve flails, Tony rolls, and then they’re both on the ground panting.

Tony’s fingers come away from his lips red. He narrows his eyes at Steve. “Unnecessary.”

Steve is panting. He’s leaning against the bar cart, hot all over. “You should have told me,” he says, but the words are weak now. He just feels drained and, looking at the cut on Tony’s cheekbone, sorry.

“Boys,” Nat says, squatting so she’s on their level, “cool off, alright?”

Steve nods. He stands shakily and stumbles away, hoping no one will follow. He just wants to be alone, just for a minute, just to let it settle that Bucky was here, Bucky came here for help. He came to _Tony_, not Steve.

God, _why? _

How long has he been in New York? Why hadn’t Steve bothered to check? Why hadn’t Bucky come to him?

“Steve.”

His shoulders drop. He doesn’t turn around, just waits for Nat to creep forward. He can feel her eyes on him, steely, unblinking like she’s afraid she might miss something.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah?” comes dryly. Then, “Steve… I’ve never seen you like that.”

“Is Tony okay?”

“Fractured cheekbone, a bruised side, nothing he hasn’t seen before.” She pauses. “You were pulling your punches.”

Steve works his jaw. “I didn’t mean to get so out of hand. It’s just that…”

“You’re real ride or die with Barnes,” Nat finishes knowingly. “I get it, really.”

She’s talking about Barton. Or maybe all of them, these days. Steve is sometimes still unsure of where they stand. To him she’s a sister, the same way the Commandos were his brothers. He just doesn’t know if the feeling is mutual in a way that’s forever, or if it really came down to it, she’d be able to cut her ties and walk away without looking back. It scares him sometimes and it’s maybe a stupid anxiety to have, but it’s still there.

Steve finally meets her eyes. Ride or die, she’d said. That’s a real nice way of putting it. _Til the end of the line, _he wants to correct, but decides he would rather keep that quiet in his heart.

“You’re angry.”

“I—of _course_.”

Nat nods. “So should I tell you the rest or let you take it in waves?”

Steve feels sick. “There’s more?”

Nat looks at him for a long time, skeptically like she’s weighing her options. Then she says it, casts it out like a roll of dice, cashing in a chance; “I met Barnes when I was ten.”

Steve thinks he might be falling, but when the vertigo ceases he’s still on his feet, gripping the glass railing of the balcony. “_What?_”

“He trained us,” Nat whispers it like it hurts her too, “the girls in the Red Room.”

Steve struggles to put that together in his mind. These are cables he can’t quite connect to make a spark. “Natasha, what the hell are you—?”

“They called him the white wolf. They would bring him in a few times a year to train with us, to teach us how to kill. I think they must have wiped him sometimes, because he would come back and look at me like I was a stranger and we’d have to get to know each other all over again. That was the hardest part, when they took him away. _God_, they did it so many times and it still _never_ stopped hurting.”

“Romanoff—”

“He was my brother,” she tells him, firm. “He was my only family in that place and even _that_ wasn’t real. It was all built around the shit they dumped into his head. I’d never heard someone sound so dead speaking Russian before.”

Steve can’t handle this. He has a hard enough time imagining the Red Room for Natasha, a little girl learning about weapons and killing and carving out hearts the way they teach kids to read and write. He hates it, and he hates it more trying to put Bucky in the middle of it all, Bucky with his soft smile, Bucky with his rough warm hands, Bucky with the dimple on his chin. He doesn’t belong there. He doesn’t belong in that picture.

Nat keeps going, ripping the band-aid off all at once. “The last time they took him away—Steve, he was so scared. I’d never seen anyone that scared before. He’d started to wake up and he was trying to help me get out of there, but they stopped us and—god, they brought us to this room, strapped him down in a chair—”

“_Stop_.”

She stumbles to a halt, eyes wide and full of unshed tears like she hadn’t quite meant to say that much. It had come out of her ragged. Steve can tell it’s been lodged in her throat for a long time, something she has likely ached to talk about but couldn’t because she had no one to properly confide in.

No one, not a single soul alive on this Earth, could possibly understand how much it fucking hurts to lose Bucky Barnes the way that Steve Rogers can.

“I’m sorry,” Nat whispers.

Steve looks away. He feels small again, the way he did before the serum; a shell of himself, or maybe what’s still inside the shell. He wants to vomit and he wants to scream and more than all of it he just wants _Bucky_. He wants to see him with his own eyes and know that it wasn’t all just a fever dream

(the nights in moonlight when the boiler would finally kick on and steve would wake up with the sudden change in temperature, because he was just sensitive like that. bucky always stayed asleep through it though, eyelashes fluttering over his cheeks and steve would think about all of the wishes they were worth and then scold himself, because those weren’t the sort of things you thought about your best friend.

the days in that loft above the garage where bucky had worked; buck with grease stained hands ranting on about this or that, but never the job, because he was lucky to have one as it was and it paid okay to boot. it had been sweltering in that loft and bucky would sit with carburetors on his lap and sweat on his brow and steve would think about getting a rag and dampening it away, just like bucky always did for him when he was shaking in bed with a fever. but no, let bucky sweat, just the way steve always did on the inside when he leaned too close and smiled that smile.

steve had never put much credence into the concept of heaven, but he had thought once that maybe if you were a good person when you were alive, what came after might just be all the best moments replayed over and over again like a film on a reel.

he thinks most of his would be that smile.)

“Steve?”

He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and shakes his head as it all just comes flooding back, all of the things he had refused to let in because he’d been so afraid, because he hadn’t wanted to carry it all around when there was no one to carry it with him.

“Do you want me to leave?” Nat asks, because he still hasn’t spoken.

Steve nods. It’s all he can do.

“Okay,” Nat whispers. “I have something I need to do anyway. I’ll be back in about two days, alright?”

Steve nods again and wonders if that’s long enough to stop hating her the way he’s pretty sure he does now.

“Alright.”

.

**The Huffington Post** @HuffPost

BREAKING: The Winter Soldier’s identity leaked amongst trial chaos — Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of Captain America’s Howling Commandos charged with high treason huff-jbws-09oi.56

**BuzzFeed** <@BuzzFeed

So It Turns Out James Barnes Isn’t Dead and Also He’s a Mass Murderer. No, We Didn’t See It Coming Either: buzz-jbws-789.io

.

“How are they treating you?”

Bucky shifts in his chair. “Fine.”

Stark raises an eyebrow over the frames of his sunglasses. “Are you sure? Because you don’t sound sure and if you’re not, I can do something about that. I _am_ Tony Stark, after all.”

Bucky shrugs. “You’ve already done enough.”

“Bare minimum, really.”

Bucky looks down. His mother always told him not to put his elbows on tables and weirdly enough he remembers that then, bringing them down so that the edge cuts into his forearm. The other is gone, confiscated as a weapon.

It’s sort of funny to have just once piece of him labelled as dangerous instead of the whole of him, for once.

“It’s fine,” he answers honestly, because really it is. The holding cell is barren but clean. The walls are white and the bed is too small but if he curls up just right he can fit. It’s nowhere near as bad as anything he’s had before, this he knows. It certainly beats roots digging into his back underneath a German night sky, or the cold grey room he can barely remember, the one with the rusted walls and no windows.

Stark studies him. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

“You seem morose.”

“Maybe that’s because I am.”

Stark taps the glass, prompting Bucky to raise his eyes all the way. He realises Stark has taken the shades off so there is nothing between them but the clear pane. “Barnes,” he says, “Steve knows.”

Bucky’s stomach withers even if it’s not really a surprise.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Stark clears his throat. Shifts. “He wants to see you. Will you put him on your list?”

Bucky has thought about that a thousand times or more, and usually he comes up with the same answer every time: yes. _Yes_, he wants to see Steve, wants to see with his own eyes that Steve is alive and okay and not half dead on a riverbank because of Bucky.

But then he remembers that it would be hell to see Steve and not be able to touch him, hell and worse to see him again, really see him, under the circumstances. He can’t meet Steve like this.

And that’s what it is, really. It’s a first meeting with a love from a life prior to this one.

So he says, “No.”

Stark sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose, all _you’re killing me here, Bucky,_ the same way Steve used to. Only Steve would smile, too, and try to hide it before Bucky caught on.

“You’re growing increasingly monotonous, have you noticed that?”

“Maybe.”

Stark’s forehead hits the glass. “Barnes. Give me something here.”

Bucky chews on his own tongue for a moment before he finally asks, “How’s it coming on your end?”

“The legal team is shaping up nicely,” Stark reports. “I like our odds, but the defense is already trying to use what the media is saying about you to their advantage. I believe I’ve found a solution to that, though, so no matter.”

Bucky swallows. “And what are they saying about me?”

“They aren’t saying much about _you_ at all,” Stark replies smoothly, and that tells Bucky all he needs to know.

“Steve?” he asks.

“Pacing the penthouse so much he’s cracked tile.” Bucky snorts and Stark presses, “I mean it, really. I found two cracks. That flooring is expensive.”

“Pocket change for you,” Bucky says. “Besides, you don’t know expensive. You never lived through the Depression.”

“Believe me, I have.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Just tell him to cool his jets.”

Stark outright laughs. “Yeah, great solution there, Barnes. That’ll definitely get him to stop ripping his own hair out and rocking back and forth like Stewie Griffin.”

“Who?”

Stark waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. Still, you know what would help? If you let him see you.”

“No.”

“Barnes—”

“I don’t care if he threatens to bust into the place, you tell him _no_. Put him on lockdown if you have to. I’m not—” he sucks in a sharp breath. “Not now.”

Stark’s face softens marginally. “Alright.”

There’s a small pause, and then:

“Did you get my present?”

Bucky’s lip quirks up when he thinks of the stuffed bear that had been waiting on his holding cell bed, the one with blue and red fur. Stark got a kick outta the whole thing, Bucky can tell. “How’d you even manage that?” he asks in place of an answer.

Stark’s shoulders shift gracefully. “I have my ways.”

“Yeah?” Bucky shakes his head, and this next part is sincere: “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” says Stark.

Bucky waits for another few seconds, all out of things to say, all out of fight, and then he hangs up the phone.

.

After they sit him down and explain it to him, it really does make sense. Still it doesn’t change the way Steve feels: repulsed, utterly, down to his very core.

Not because of the little tin box on the coffee table or what’s inside of it. Not because of the words. But because of what it means they have to do.

“It’s the best way to get the public on our side,” Nat tells him, low and soft.

“_However_,” Tony adds, “we understand if you’d rather not.”

Steve’s hands shake. He can’t look away from the container with the Red Cross stamped on top. At some point it must have held Morita’s medical supplies; now, inside is a heart, inside is hope. It’s Pandora’s Box and they want to open it for the whole world to see when Steve hasn’t even—

“Can I read them first?”

“Of course,” Nat says immediately, and then because naturally she’s already read them too, “you should.”

Steve nods. He doesn’t mind. He can’t bring himself to care about much at all these days, really, except Buck. So he takes the box and cradles it to his chest, looking up at their matching expressions of concern for a moment. “I’ll be…”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “We’ll, uh, leave you to it.”

Steve nods. Neither of them follow after him this time. Neither of them question it when he slips into Bucky’s room instead of his own, with the sheets that still smell like plain ivory soap and detergent and Bucky.

He sits on top of the bed. He takes a deep breath. He unlatches the box.

.

**The Wall Street Journal** @WSJ

Ten media outlets mailed copies of leaked letters addressed to Steve Rogers from the Winter Soldier, James Barnes. Read more: twsj-tws/zi09.768

**BuzzFeed** @BuzzFeed

Holy Shit, You Guys, James Barnes Was Totally Gay for Steve Rogers and Here Is The Proof: buzz-holy-shit/567.4om9

.

melancholics:

okay y’all know i don’t normally talk about irl shit online but fuck i just read all of The Letters (y’all know the ones) and oh my god i’m crying more than i have since my cat died

lilia-billia:

**me:** ugh i’m so tired and done with love

**james buchanan barnes:** I’ll live in the dark my whole goddamn life it means forever with you, Stevie.

**me, sobbing: **y e a h

.

** _James Barnes: Love Letters vs. the Law_ **

by J.J. Jameson

These days there aren’t many things that can shake the world. We’ve seen humans tear each other apart, terrorize one another; we’ve lived through alien invasions, world wars. You know it’s big when everyone is talking about it.

And everyone _is_ talking about it. I’m currently situated in my local coffee shop, one of the more exclusive and isolated ones nestled into the heart of the city, and the whole place is buzzing. My ears perk as four teenagers ahead of me in line whisper about them, the infamous letters, eyes alight as they quote line after line to another; later, the barista hands me my cup of straight black coffee and I hear two of her co-workers gushing about them, too; it’s all around me, behind my screen, in front of my very own human eyes. It is an undeniable fact: they exist, and everyone is reading them.

These letters—fifteen in total—are not dated, but it can and has been concluded by experts that they were written between the years 1943-1944; from James Barnes’ deployment to a week before the mission we had all believed resulted in his demise. Last Wednesday’s revelation that he and the Winter Soldier were in fact one in the same sparked a world-wide debate over whether or not the charges of high treason and war-related crimes deserved to be dropped or not. The letters have only added fuel to the fire.

To this I say one thing: of _course_ he should still face the charges.

Listen, I know, I grew up reading James Barnes and his Howling Commandos too. I sat starry eyed in front of my TV and watched every cheesy movie about the adventures of Captain America and his beloved side-kick. I understand the confusion many are feeling right now, the sense of loss and displacement.

But does that excuse _murder?_ Does that excuse deflecting from your post and joining the Soviet Union? Does that make every life James Buchanan Barnes took simply irrelevant, all because he loved Steve Rogers?

Let me put it like this: loving Captain America isn’t enough. You’ve got to love America, too.

Most of the information we know about the Winter Soldier missions is second hand. The files are available online but heavily redacted. In fact, you’re lucky to get more than five words from a page. But we have a number. There is a number typed clearly at the bottom of a file titled _Asset Review - 1989. _

The number is 112.

The context for this number? _Targets terminated. _

That’s one-hundred and twelve lives lost at the hands of James Barnes, and that is far from a current report. Who knows how many more lives were taken between the years of 1989-2013 (believed to be the year of his deflection from the criminal organization known as HYDRA)?

We don’t have much more information than that. We know that James Barnes fought in WWII. We know that at some point he was captured and possibly tortured, only to be rescued by Cap. Steve Rogers. We know that James Barnes expressed a strong romantic interest in Rogers during a time when such affections could have resulted in the outright execution of them both; but these letters are not what James Barnes is on trial for.

James Barnes is on trial for the murder of forty five people and who knows what else.

In conclusion: loving another man doesn’t make you a criminal. Killing another man? That does.

.

SPECIAL CRIMINAL COURT 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

VERSUS

SGT. JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES 

PROVINCE OF WASHINGTON

. 

BAILIFF: All rise. Department Four of the Special Criminal Court is now in session.

JUDGE JONES: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Calling the case of the People of the United States of America versus Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Can he be accounted for as present?

DEFENSE ATTORNEY ROSENTHAL: My client is present, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Is the District Attorney prepared to begin this trial? 

DISTRICT ATTORNEY MOTLEY: Ready for the People, Your Honor. 

JUDGE: Is the defense?

ROSENTHAL: Yes, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Will the clerk please swear in the jury?

CLERK: Will the jury please stand and raise your right hand? Do each of you swear that you will fairly try the case before this court, and that you will return a true verdict according to the evidence and the instructions of the court, so help you God? Please say “I do”.

JURY [_collective_]: I do.

CLERK: You may be seated.

JUDGE: District Attorney Motley, please present your opening statement to the court.

MOTLEY: Michael Blackwell was an ambassador for the United States of America. He served for twenty-three years and, on June 18th, 1987, he was murdered [_points to defendant_] by that man. Angela Bennet was a high ranking SHIELD official. She was thirty-two years old and died on her birthday, found the following morning face down on her kitchen table with a bullet in the back of her skull and an uneaten cupcake beside her. [_points to defendant_] That man killed her. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of passing atomic secrets to the soviets in 1951. The man they conspired with? [_points to defendant_] He is sitting right there.

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: We might never know just how many lives James Barnes took, but we have a small fraction. We have the evidence right before us: mission reports that depict how every target was terminated in cruel, sick ways; or even nonchalantly, a gunshot in the night of little consequence. The defense would have you believe that James Barnes is a man of high honor, morals, and loyalty. Throughout the duration of this trial they will paint you a romantic picture of him and his services to our country during World War II. I beg you: don’t ignore the brush strokes. The defendant is charged with and has committed, I assure you: murder, high treason, and countless war crimes against his country and its people. I stand here today on behalf of that country and its people and I remind you that James Barnes and the Winter Soldier are one in the same and together, they are a traitor. Thank you.

[_pause_]

JUDGE: The defense, your opening statement.

ROSENTHAL: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m not going to paint you a picture of how the defendant’s life was torn apart. I’m going to show you. Photographic, recorded, irrefutable evidence, as cold and hard as it comes. I will leave no doubt in your minds that Sergeant James Barnes did die that day in the Alps, and that everything that happened after—every murder, every conspiracy, every crime—was of no conscious mind. I know it seems unlikely, even positively convenient, that this man is only waking up now—waking up after a long and terrible nightmare—but it’s the truth. I’m going to show you how they trapped him inside of his own body and twisted his psyche into something unrecognizable. I’m going to show you how he fought tooth and nail to take the driver’s seat again only to get pushed back, again and again. I’m going to show you that he wasn’t just a good man, but a great one. A loyal one. My client—[_pause_] ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client’s story has stunned me. I am not easily stunned, and admitting that doesn’t come naturally. I have a reputation after all.

[_scattered laughter_]

ROSENTHAL: I want you to know that I’m proud to stand up here today and defend James Barnes. I can think of no higher honour, and I have little doubt that by the end of these proceedings you’ll feel much the same about finding him not guilty. Thank you.

. 

MOTLEY: Ms. Crawley, your father was Nicholas Crawley, correct?

CRAWLEY: That’s correct.

MOTLEY: And it’s also correct that you were just eight when he died?

CRAWLEY: Yes.

MOTLEY: Can you tell us about the morning of August 14th, 1979?

CRAWLEY: [_sharp breath_] It was morning, like you said. I don’t remember a lot from before that day and I don’t remember a lot after it for a long time, but I remember what I saw when I walked into that bathroom.

MOTLEY: And what was that?

CRAWLEY: It was [_hesitating_] it was my father, lying in the tub. He was face down. There was blood—there was blood everywhere. They tell you in school how much but you never really know until it’s all over the floor and—and it was. It was spilling out over the rim of the tub and I remember—I remember the grout was stained pink for six months, until we finally moved—me and my mother, that is.

[_Exhibit #6._]

MOTLEY: I apologise, Ms. Crawley. This is a photograph of the scene, dated August 14th, 1979. It looks as it did in your memory? Nothing appears to have been tampered with or planted?

CRAWLEY: N-No, it’s just the same.

MOTLEY: Thank you. Can you think of any reason why he would be face down in the tub?

CRAWLEY: [_shaky breath_] To humiliate him, I suppose.

MOTLEY: So you believe that he was turned?

CRAWLEY: Well that’s what makes the most sense, isn’t it?

MOTLEY: And how exactly did you come to that conclusion, aside from the positioning of your father’s body?

CRAWLEY: The message written in blood on the wall.

MOTLEY: The message which was written not on the tile but on the paper where it would have to be torn away, correct?

CRAWLEY: Y-Yes, I suppose so.

MOTLEY: What did it say?

CRAWLEY: I-It said ‘Rache’.

MOTLEY: And the significance of this?

CRAWLEY: It’s [_struggling_] it was what my father used to call me. It was my nickname. Short for Rachel? I thought—God, for the longest time I thought he’d killed himself. His wrists were slit, you know? They made it look like a suicide. I remember my mother never looked at me the same after that. I think she was jealous. [_tearfully_] She thought he’d been writing to me when he died.

MOTLEY: That’s alright, Ms. Crawley. As it so happens, we’ve had professionals analyse the picture and we believe the message to have actually been the German translation of ‘revenge’. You came to about the same conclusion, didn’t you?

CRAWLEY: Yes, when I was around sixteen or so. I began taking German in high school and learned the meaning of the word in the language.

MOTLEY: Did it shock you?

CRAWLEY: Y-Yes. I didn’t eat for three days. I couldn’t sleep. It had been eight years by that point—I’d been without him just as long as I’d had him and—God, I thought he was gonna come for me too. I thought that’s what it meant, like it was a warning.

MOTLEY: This second ‘he’ you’re referring to, do you mean the Winter Soldier?

CRAWLEY: Yes, God, sorry, I—

MOTLEY: That’s alright, Ms. Crawley, we just need to make sure the record is clear. Can you tell us about your father’s profession?

CRAWLEY: [_sniffing_] He told my mother he worked for NATO, but that was a lie. He worked—he worked for the NSA for thirty years.

MOTLEY: And you discovered this when?

CRAWLEY: After the Snowden leaks.

MOTLEY: Thank you. Do you remember what the files stated his last project had been?

CRAWLEY: They said he’d come across some old transmission on a hidden channel or something—there were these words repeating on a loop in Russian and every so often the number at the end of the tape would go up, like someone was updating it. He was trying to trace it when he died.

MOTLEY: And he never did finish?

CRAWLEY: Not to my knowledge.

MOTLEY: That’s alright. We had someone complete the trace. There were actually two sets of numbers at the end of the tape, correct? The first of which always remained the same?

CRAWLEY: I believe so, yes.

MOTLEY: That’s because they were coordinates leading to this location.

[_Exhibit #7._]

MOTLEY: This is a satellite photograph of the base where HYDRA hid James Barnes for nearly fifty years.

[_murmurs_]

MOTLEY: So HYDRA discovered the signal had been tapped and felt threatened, so they sent their best dog to do their dirty work for them. James Barnes was behind the murder of Nicholas Crawley in 1979. Mr. Crawley’s name is listed in a mission report—just one of the many men and women murdered by the defendant. Now the questions we must ask ourselves is _why?_ Why the note? Why chose to deface the scene and humiliate Mr. Crawley’s body in such a way? To leave it for a little girl to find? 

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: Thank you, Ms. Crawley. No further questions, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Rosenthal.

ROSENTHAL: Thank you, Your Honor. Ms. Crawley, you said you believed for eight years that your father had killed himself. Your mother, in turn, seemed to have had no doubts about the matter herself. Why is this?

CRAWLEY: Well she told me… she told me that he had been suffering from PTSD for a long time. That he’d—he’d tried to do it once before.

ROSENTHAL: I see. And so neither of you initially questioned the postulation that he had killed himself that night?

CRAWLEY: No, not really.

ROSENTHAL: You said your father’s nickname for you was, indeed, ‘_Rache_’?

CRAWLEY: It was.

ROSENTHAL: He called you this often?

CRAWLEY: He did.

ROSENTHAL: Often enough for you to have immediately recognised its significance?

CRAWLEY: Yes, but—

ROSENTHAL: You said your mother told you that your father had tried to kill himself once before. That’s a bit of a strange thing to tell a grieving eight year old child, don’t you think?

CRAWLEY: She only told me much later.

ROSENTHAL: How much later?

CRAWLEY: It was the day I told her about what I’d discovered in my German language class—about what Rache really meant. She—she denied it, she refused to listen to what I had to say.

ROSENTHAL: Really? Why do you think that is?

CRAWLEY: Maybe… maybe she knew? And she didn’t want me poking my nose where it didn’t belong, getting myself killed too?

ROSENTHAL: But your father had tried to kill himself once before. He was found at nine in the morning, but the autopsy report says that he died at around ten the night prior. Where would you have been then?

CRAWLEY: [_confused_] It—I would have been asleep, I suppose.

ROSENTHAL: And your room was beside the bathroom where he died?

CRAWLEY: Yes.

[_Exhibit #8._]

ROSENTHAL: In fact, we can see here that your bed was pressed against the wall that divided the two rooms. Even more telling; the bed and the bathtub would be adjacent to one another.

CRAWLEY: I suppose, yes.

ROSENTHAL: Are you a light sleeper, Ms. Crawley?

CRAWLEY: It… it depends.

ROSENTHAL: But wouldn’t you say that one man trying to kill the other is bound to cause at least some ruckus? And what’s more, the turning of the body—if he was indeed turned—wouldn’t that have made noise enough to startle you awake?

CRAWLEY: I-I suppose.

ROSENTHAL: Your father was a heavy man, wasn’t he? Muscular. In fact the autopsy report says that he was two hundred and seventy pounds.

CRAWLEY: He was, yes.

ROSENTHAL: So he was definitely large enough, strong enough, to have at least tried to put up a struggle?

CRAWLEY: Well, I… yes, I guess so.

ROSENTHAL: But there was no sign of a struggle, was there? No cracked porcelain, no smudges of blood beyond that which spilled out of the bathtub and that which was used to write the word ‘Rache’ on the wall. There were no bruises on your father’s body, no traces of any drugs in his system that might have rendered him incapacitated, and yet… he was murdered?

CRAWLEY: [_defensive_] But that’s what the file says!

ROSENTHAL: You’re referring to Exhibit #7? Yes, I was going to get around to that. Mr. Motley referred to it as a mission report, but it’s really written quite differently. The phrasing almost makes it appear to be a statement of reprimand. Would you read that note in paragraph 9?

CRAWLEY: [_sighing_] “Asset arrived at property approx. three in the morning—”

ROSENTHAL: Three? And yet the autopsy report states that your father died at around ten—

CRAWLEY: [_irritated_] Maybe it was a mistake.

ROSENTHAL: It’s a pretty big mistake to make. Five hours. Could you please continue reading to paragraph 10?

CRAWLEY: “Asset failed to enact orders. Asset stalled. Target was terminated—” the rest is redacted.

ROSENTHAL: That’s quite alright. Could you just read the first two lines again?

CRAWLEY: “Asset failed to enact orders. Asset stalled.”

ROSENTHAL: Interesting. So from this we can summarize that there is a definite possibility Mr. Crawley was long dead by the time the Winter Soldier reached the property; that he killed himself before the Winter Soldier ever had the opportunity to lay a hand on him. Ms. Crawley, I hope you take some consolation in the renewed likelihood that in his last moments, your father was thinking of you. No further questions, Your Honor.

.

MOTLEY: Mr. Lyle, you were employed in the year of 1971 by Senator Harry Baxtor, correct?

LYLE: That’s right, sir.

MOTLEY: [_smiling_] There’s no need for that. What was your position in his household?

LYLE: I was his pool boy.

MOTLEY: And you worked for him for two years?

LYLE: Yeah, that’s right.

MOTLEY: Would you say the two of you were very close?

LYLE: Not at all. We probably only spoke just the once, when I was hired. I saw him around a few times here and there, but mostly he just wanted us to be like ghosts. He had this real old house—it had passages in the walls and that’s where we’d walk through to get from place to place so he didn’t have to see us.

MOTLEY: But you were the one who discovered him in the pool?

LYLE: Yeah, I was.

MOTLEY: Face down?

LYLE: [_face twisting_] Yeah.

[_Exhibit #11._]

MOTLEY: Yourself and the authorities determined the incident to be a mere accident. Baxtor’s body was examined and it was found that his blood alcohol content was 0.10%. In other words, the man was drunk. The police then concluded that he must have tripped and fallen into the pool late at night where he was found by you. Does that sound about right?

LYLE: Uh, yes, sir.

[_Exhibit #12._]

MOTLEY: Could you please do the court a favor and read the un-redacted paragraph in that file? The first one there?

LYLE: Uh, sure. “Asset eliminated target Senator Harry Baxtor as of 22:04, March 12th 1973. The death was made to look accidental. The asset—”

MOTLEY: That’s enough, thank you. You stated in your original testimony, Mr. Lyle, that you glimpsed an unfamiliar man in the backyard the night you found the body. Is the same man sitting on the dock right now?

LYLE: [_swallows_] Yeah, that’s him.

MOTLEY: Thank you. No further questions, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Rosenthal?

ROSENTHAL: Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Lyle, I’m sorry you had to be the one to find Senator Baxtor like that. It must have been incredibly traumatic.

LYLE: [_shrugs_] My therapist says I blocked the worst of it out.

ROSENTHAL: Is that so?

LYLE: Been a long time too.

ROSENTHAL: [_nods_] It has. Mr. Lyle, could you please continue reading from where you left off in Exhibit #12?

LYLE: Uh, right. “The asset failed to reach the extraction point. Status: MIA.”

ROSENTHAL: Thank you.

[_Exhibit #13._]

ROSENTHAL: And now the summary there, please?

LYLE: “The asset was recovered in a flophouse in Brooklyn, New York City. Asset’s mental capacity was compromised; it struggled when its handlers attempted to contain it and ran twenty blocks before it was contained. Asset underwent standard reconditioning therapy and received a full memory wipe. Caution will be taken upon sending Asset to the United States for further missions.”

ROSENTHAL: Read that first line again, please.

LYLE: Okay, uh, “The asset was recovered in a flophouse in Brooklyn, New York”.

ROSENTHAL: Thank you.

MOTLEY: Objection—what does any of this have to do with the witness?

JUDGE: Overruled.

ROSENTHAL: Thank you. Now, Mr. Lyle, you said you saw James Barnes that night. Why didn’t you pursue him?

LYLE: I, uh—I mean he was there one second and gone the next. I just got the one good look and I—I was even sure if he was _real_—

ROSENTHAL: You weren’t sure he was real? Why not? What reason would you have to doubt your own eyes?

LYLE: [_stammering_] I, uh—I

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Lyle, were you under the influence of something that night?

LYLE: [_affronted_] No way! No, I was straight. I swear to God, I saw him. I know that, now.

ROSENTHAL: And yet, you also mentioned that you had blocked a lot of the incident out. Beyond that, it’s been almost forty years. How can you be so certain?

LYLE: Because I’ll never forget the look on his face. [_shaking head_] He was terrified.

ROSENTHAL: [_surprised_] Terrified?

LYLE: Yeah. I thought he must’ve known him real well or something. You could never really keep track of who Mr. Baxtor knew, what with so many people coming and going all the time, but him? He was even more scared than I was, I could tell. Guess he was worried about getting caught.

ROSENTHAL: [_slowly_] Even more scared than you were? You’re sure?

LYLE: His face was white as a sheet.

ROSENTHAL: So you wouldn’t say he looked pleased, or even apathetic?

LYLE: No way.

ROSENTHAL: Would you describe him as looking ill, maybe?

LYLE: Oh yeah. Thought he must’ve been already. He was sweating, too, even though it wasn’t real hot that day. Doesn’t get hot in California until April.

ROSENTHAL: Thank you.

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: So to summarize, the Winter Soldier was undeniably deployed on a mission to assassinate Senator Harry Baxtor. Upon the completion of this mission, he began to wake up. Bits and pieces of James Barnes were returning to him. He got scared—

MOTLEY: Objection—speculation.

JUDGE: Sustained.

ROSENTHAL: In Mr. Lyle’s own words, James Barnes appeared to be terrified that day. We know for a fact that he travelled to New York. We also know for a fact that James Barnes was born in New York City, specifically in Brooklyn, where he lived and grew up until he was drafted for the Second World War. In his undeniable fear, he travelled to the one place that must have felt familiar to him. James Barnes went home. What he expected to find we can’t say. But we know he went there, and we know he put up a struggle when the HYDRA agents came for him. We know he ran. We know he fought. We can conclude from this that he did not want to go back and subsequently did not return willingly. To counter this, they wiped his memory and tortured him.

MOTLEY: Objection—where in that document does it say he was tortured for the offense?!

JUDGE: Sustained. Rosenthal, please explain your reasoning.

ROSENTHAL: The methods for “reconditioning therapy” are outlined in a detailed fashion here.

[_Exhibit #14._]

ROSENTHAL: Permission to read the document aloud in order to clarify, Your Honor?

JUDGE: Granted.

ROSENTHAL: “Reconditioning session 34: observations recorded by Dr. Arnim Zola. Subject struggled upon sight of the chair and proceeded to break the necks of two of its handlers. It took four to get it strapped down. Subject stopped screaming midway (twenty minutes) into electroshock therapy. Subject became more alert during waterboarding. Struggled before growing fatigued. Was able to endure less than last time. Subject was muttering to itself throughout the duration of the session until the wipe. French: Putain de connards; suave-moi, dieu; où es-tu, Stevie? Aidez moi. Translation below.”

JUDGE: The translation?

ROSENTHAL: [_flat_] “Fucking cowards. Save me, God. Where are you, Stevie? Help me.”

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: [_quietly_] No further questions, Your Honor.

. 

MOTLEY: Mr. Stark, I must say before we begin what an honor it is to be able to question you.

STARK: Well, I hope I can say the same about being questioned by the end of this.

[_scattered laughter_]

MOTLEY: It’s my understanding that you’ve provided the new technology which will allow us to view some of our witnesses’ memories first hand?

STARK: That’s right. Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing. I call it BARF for short.

[_laughter_]

MOTLEY: [_smiling_] And this technology couldn’t be used to, say, alter memories in any way?

STARK: I’m sure it could, but we’ve done our best to ensure that every memory used is corroborated by at least one other person. Of course, that’s not possible for all of them, but the extraction and copying of every single memory was witnessed by authorities and I have had no access to any of the files since. Since I’m the only one smart enough to tamper with them like that, I think it’s safe to say we’ll be viewing them honestly.

MOTLEY: But isn’t it true that every time we remember something, we psychologically alter it?

STARK: That’s correct. No memory will be perfectly accurate, but as I’ve said we’ve done our best to double up wherever possible to ensure that at least the vital information is correct.

MOTLEY: [_nodding_] Of course. Not to put you on the spot like that. The technology you’ve brought to this courtroom will be a groundbreaking development for all future criminal cases.

STARK: Yeah, well, I do what I can.

[_scattered laughter_]

MOTLEY: And we thank you. Now, onto business.

[_Exhibit #15._]

MOTLEY: In 2011, you authorized the writing and publication of a biography by Nathan Singh, is that correct?

STARK: Well everyone was just so curious, how could I not?

MOTLEY: Yes or no, please, Mr. Stark.

STARK: [_dry_] Yes, that’s correct.

MOTLEY: Mr. Stark, could you please read aloud this excerpt from that biography, specifically paragraphs eleven through eighteen of the interview conducted between you and Mr. Singh?

STARK: “Singh: [laughs] Right. Do you think your father would agree with the course of action you’ve taken in regards to the company he founded? Stark: I think that no matter what I would have done it. It was the right thing to do at the time and I stand by the decision. I don’t see the point in postulating the opinions of dead men—”

MOTLEY: Stop right there, please, actually. Mr. Stark, isn’t that a rather callous way to refer to your own father? The man who raised you, the man who provided you with a legacy that allowed you to achieve such a high level of success at an incredibly young age? Something you likely couldn’t have done on your own merit?

STARK: [_sharply_] I think you’d be surprised at just what I’m capable of on my own merit.

MOTLEY: But you can’t deny that it would have taken much more work to garner the fame that you have today?

STARK: If you’re implying that I should be grateful toward a terrorist organisation for kidnapping me, I’ll have to politely disagree.

MOTLEY: That’s not at all what I’m implying, Mr. Stark. So you would say it was the incident in 2009 which sparked your rise to fame and not the inheritance of your father’s company?

ROSENTHAL: Objection—relevance?

JUDGE: Overruled. I believe Mr. Motley is attempting to establish the relationship between Mr. Stark and his late father. I’ll allow it, but get to your point please quickly, Motley.

MOTLEY: Of course, Your Honor. Mr. Stark?

STARK: Frankly, I never thought much about it.

MOTLEY: Naturally. Please continue reading from Exhibit #3.

STARK: “Singh: Of course. On that same note, though, do you think things would have gone the same way had he lived? Stark: Geez, is this book about me or my old man? Singh: You’re the focus, of course, but my goal is to retrace all of your steps, dissect why and how you did the things that you’ve done. The starting point is here, now, today; the end goal is to unravel the whole of your origin story. Parents usually play a part in those. Stark: Well if it’s alright with you, I’d like to refrain from that line of questioning for now.” [_pause_] “Singh: Damn. Right before I get to the good stuff? Stark: I think you’ll find there’s not much good in the stuff.”

MOTLEY: Perfect, thank you. It’s been a few years since then. How would you describe your relationship with your father now, Mr. Stark? Do you still feel the same? Do you feel that there wasn’t much ‘good’ between the two of you?

STARK: I’m failing to see how this has anything to do with Mr. Barnes’ trial.

JUDGE: It’s not your job to see that, Mr. Stark, it’s mine. Answer Mr. Motley’s question, please.

STARK: Oh, for the love of God.

MOTLEY: Mr. Stark, the question?

STARK: It was [_hesitating_] strained. There was very little understanding or compassion on either end.

MOTLEY: I see. No compassion from your end?

STARK: Excuse me?

MOTLEY: That’s what you just said. “No compassion from either end.” Should we quote it back? Clerk—

STARK: No, thank you, that’s not necessary. [pause] We had a complicated relationship. My father was a cold and calculating man. Expressions of affection weren’t his thing.

MOTLEY: But expressions of the opposite?

STARK: Pardon?

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: Mr. Stark, did your father ever hit you?

ROSENTHAL: [_outraged_] Objection!

JUDGE: Overruled.

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: Mr. Stark?

STARK: I don’t see how—

JUDGE: Mr. Stark, the question.

STARK: [_shaky_] Yes.

MOTLEY: Yes, your father hit you?

STARK: [_sharp breath_] Yes.

[_murmurs_]

MOTLEY: Often?

STARK: Define often.

MOTLEY: More than once a year?

STARK: More than once a month. Wasn’t so bad when I went off to MIT, though.

MOTLEY: I see. And as a result of this abuse your relationship was, as you put it, strained?

STARK: Obviously.

JUDGE: Mr. Stark.

STARK: [_forcefully into mic_] Yes.

MOTLEY: Strained enough to organize his murder with the defendant?

[_yelling_]

ROSENTHAL: Objection!

JUDGE: Order! ORDER!

STARK: [_muttering_] Fuck this—

JUDGE: Please, order!

ROSENTHAL: Your Honor, I’d like to call for a recess!

JUDGE: Request granted. We’ll reconvene in fifteen minutes.

. 

“What the hell was that?!”

“I had no idea—”

“What the hell?!” Tony demands again. He is pressing his thumb to his left palm, eyes wild. “Where the _fuck_ do they get off accusing me of—asking me about—as if I could _ever_—I loved my mother—”

“Tony,” Nat cuts in, “take a deep breath.”

“Take a deep breath?! What the _fuck_, Romanoff?!”

“Listen to me,” Rosenthal says, “they were trying to get your testimony as a witness dismissible and get Jones to change her mind about letting us use the tech—”

“Yeah, I gathered.”

“I didn’t expect such a Machiavellian attack, but with a trial this big I can’t claim to be completely surprised. This is world-wide case, Mr. Stark. _Regardless_, it’s not going to do him any favors with the jury. Now give me a damn minute so I can brainstorm how to fix this, alright?”

They all quiet. Tony’s breathing is ragged, palm splayed flat over his heart like it might jump out if he’s not careful. Nat hovers, close but not wholly infringing upon his personal space, almost like she’s ready to catch him should he fall.

“Okay,” Rosenthal says, eyes hard, “okay, here’s what the fuck we’re gonna do.”

. 

JUDGE: This court is once more in session. Rosenthal, call your witness please.

ROSENTHAL: The defense calls Mr. Stark back to the stand.

CLERK: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?

STARK: I do.

ROSENTHAL: Thank you. Mr. Stark, can you tell us about the night of November 24th, 2009?

MOTLEY: Objection—relevance?

JONES: Overruled.

STARK: Well, it started with a box of pizza and ended with a fight to the death between myself and the former Vice President of my company.

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Obediah Stane?

STARK: Yes.

ROSENTHAL: This fight to the death, as you put it, was quickly covered up by SHIELD agent Phil Coulson?

STARK: Yes.

ROSENTHAL: A cover-up which was then discovered when the SHIELD files were leaked?

STARK: Got it in one.

ROSENTHAL: So you would say that your relationship with Mr. Stane wasn’t one of any affection or friendship in the end?

STARK: Absolutely not.

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Stark, you are aware of course that Mr. Obediah Stane worked with the terrorist organisation known as the Ten Rings for several years—in the capacity that he sold them weapons, advised them, and eventually arranged for your kidnapping, correct?

STARK: Yes, I’m aware.

ROSENTHAL: Did he ever tell you why?

STARK: He wanted my company. He was willing to do anything and everything to get it. For a long time he had it, too. I was only the face of SI, but he was pulling all the strings. I didn’t realise how bad it was until my return from Afghanistan.

ROSENTHAL: To which you reacted by putting to a stop the weapons division in your company?

STARK: That’s correct.

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Stark, if Mr. Stane would so readily have murdered you in order to get his hands on your company, do you think it would be a reach to say that he arranged for the deaths of your mother and father?

[_muttering_]

STARK: [_strained_] No, I don’t think it would be much of a reach at all.

ROSENTHAL: As it so happens, we have a record of this arrangement. Clerk, please play the tape.

[_Exhibit #16._]

_V.O. STANE: It’ll be done before Christmas? _

_V.O. PIERCE: Of course. You’ll be able to ring in the New Year as the head of Stark Industries in all but name. _

_V.O. STANE: [laughing] I suppose it won’t be long before I’m calling you to get a hit on little Anthony too, huh? _

_V.O. PIERCE: I should hope not. Milk him for all you can for now, Stane. It’s a bloody business, killing an entire line so close together. _

_V.O. STANE: I suppose your right. He’s reckless, though. Last I heard the kid was snorting coke at some frat party and flunking his physics class. [snorts] The kid can do that shit in his sleep. He’s just trying to get under Howard’s skin._

_V.O. PIERCE: I’m sure. _

_V.O. STANE: Stark’s been on your little list for a while now anyway, hasn’t he? _

_V.O. PIERCE: He’s been poking around where his nose does not belong. Be sure not to make the same mistakes, Mr. Stane, and I see no reason we cannot continue our peaceful association. I thank you for providing me with this opportunity. _

_V.O. STANE: Hey, of course. _

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: You knew him for a very long time. Can you verify for us all that the voice we just heard was in fact Mr. Stane?

STARK: [_hard_] Yes.

ROSENTHAL: From this we can reasonably conclude that the witness had nothing to do with the murder of his parents. His association with the defendant endures despite the events of December 16th, 1991, the night his parents were killed. Mr. Stark, can you clarify for the court, just what exactly is your relationship with Mr. Barnes?

STARK: It’s hard to define.

ROSENTHAL: Would you say that you resent him?

STARK: No.

ROSENTHAL: Do you blame him?

STARK: I can’t blame him for something he didn’t do.

ROSENTHAL: To repeat, you’re saying the Winter Soldier did not kill your parents?

STARK: No, I’m saying James Barnes didn’t.

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: Thank you, Mr. Stark. I believe I’m all out of questions, Your Honor.

.

**_Chaos in the Courtroom _**

by Christine Everhart

I walked home from _the People of the United States vs. James Barnes_ court proceedings in a complete daze. I have no idea how I made it back to my apartment. I was shaking as I took off my coat, shaking as I poured myself a glass of much needed red wine, and I’m shaking now as I write this. My editor will have to be extra vigilant by way of grammatical errors with this piece—sorry, Matilda.

Like most of us, I walked into that courtroom thinking the whole thing would essentially play out to be a joke; a big show for the people, a facade. What I didn’t expect were the guttural stories, the files drenched in enough blood to drown the Atlantic, the way Steve Rogers vaulted out of his seat the second Defense Attorney Bernadette Rosenthal was finished questioning the second witness.

It was surreal, really. Like curling up on the sofa to watch this week’s episode of Law and Order: SVU, only it was all real and transpiring before my very eyes. Not that I’ve never stepped foot in a courtroom before—I’ve just never been in one like this. The air was electrified. The people in the stands held their breath as the witnesses spoke. A few others, I know, cried.

Steve Rogers was one of them.

I didn’t approach him. The whole of the courthouse gave him a wide berth and according to a source he was seen ducking into the bathroom before they called Tony Stark to the stand; Sam Wilson, a fellow superhero also known as Falcon, followed him inside. Whatever it was they spoke about, I’m not sure I want to know.

I, like many of us, felt uncomfortable reading the letters written by James “Bucky” Barnes to Steve Rogers. It felt in many ways like reading the lining of someone’s heart. _Is this what it’s like to divine?_ I wondered, eyes glued to my screen as I skimmed through the sixth letter. _Am I seeing in these words what a sorceress does in the entrails of tiny bunny rabbits? _I was horrified by the idea. I felt naked, exposed. I knew too much about something far too personal.

That’s the way I felt walking home today. The case of the _People vs. James Barnes_, while so heavily intertwined with the lives of American citizens, doesn’t feel like it belongs to us. It feels like a modern day Shakespeare tragedy; it feels like a play, one I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to know the end of. At eight years old I wondered: will Juliet wake up in time to assure Romeo that she’s living, or will they both fall bloody upon the floor of the Capulet tomb?

Now I’m wondering again. We’ve barely crested Act I—tomorrow, Tony Stark will for the first time present his latest technological development. We will watch James Barnes’ life like a movie, like we are inside of it, like we are with him.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s because we really are.

READ MORE AT THEDAILYBUGLE.COM

.

**The Washington Post** @washingtonpost

Cindy Greene, 16, pictured protesting outside District of Colombia Courts with sign that reads: The People of the United States “&” James Barnes wp.img.io34-09x

**TechCrunch** @TechCrunch

Tony Stark to unveil his retroframing technology during James Barnes court proceedings today - further revolutionizing the way we handle criminal court cases techcrunch-article.mng/23409

. 

JUDGE: To avoid confusion I have decreed that every tape will be presented as is relevant to their witness; both sides will have a chance to question the witness; furthermore, we will view only those relevant to the case and charges; testimonies will be taken after each tape.

. 

[_Exhibit #17_: JAMES BARNES is sitting on a bench in a cavernous room with shuttered windows along the back wall. Light spills through only the two behind him. It appears to be late at night. He is alone until NATASHA ROMANOFF enters. Along the bottom of the hologram, a white script appears reading the year 1994.

ROMANOFF: They’re going to make me kill a man today.

BARNES: So I heard.

ROMANOFF: Valentina is excited. She’s been going on and on since they told us in the commons this morning.

BARNES: Doesn’t surprise me.

[_pause_]

ROMANOFF: [_hesitating_] What if I don’t want to?

BARNES: You have to.

ROMANOFF: I know, but—[_shaky_] How do I make it easier? How do you do it? I don’t know if I can look them in the eye and watch the light go out.

BARNES: [_considering_] Don’t think of it as a man. When you look, imagine something else. Imagine you’re in the target range instead and it’s just the tracing.

ROMANOFF: I don’t have a very good imagination.

BARNES: Neither do I.

ROMANOFF: If I didn’t do it, what would happen?

BARNES: They would kill you. You know that. You’ve known that a long time. Why are you asking questions you already know the answers to, Natalia?

ROMANOFF: Maybe I need to remind myself.

BARNES: [_nods_] Killing isn’t an easy thing to ask of a person. Not at first. The more you do it, the easier it gets, the worse you feel on the inside.

ROMANOFF: Weapons aren’t meant to feel—

BARNES: But we do.

ROMANOFF: [_uncertain_] How many men have you killed?

BARNES: I don’t know. I just know it’s a whole lot.

ROMANOFF: How do you know?

BARNES: Because of how heavy I am.

ROMANOFF: It makes you heavy?

BARNES: [_flatly_] It makes you so damn heavy it weighs you right into hell, Natalia. The ground splits like broken ice and you just fall right through.

[_pause_]

ROMANOFF: [_scrutinising_] Did you kill men before you were the wolf?

BARNES: Did I—[_frowns_] What do you mean, before?

ROMANOFF: You’re not Russian. You know the proverbs but your accent is bad. Sometimes it changes into something else. Weren’t you someone before?

BARNES: I… I don’t know. [_firmer_] No.

ROMANOFF: Are you—

BARNES: They’ll be calling you soon. Shoot straight.]

. 

MOTLEY: Ms. Romanoff, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the video we just saw, if you don’t mind.

ROMANOFF: It’s what I’m here for.

MOTLEY: [_smiling_] Right. So this—what we just saw—this took place when you were, what? Ten?

ROMANOFF: That’s correct.

MOTLEY: You were made to kill a man at ten?

ROMANOFF: Yes.

MOTLEY: Was this an unusual occurrence thereafter?

ROMANOFF: No. It was a normal part of target practise.

MOTLEY: Which the defendant seemed indifferent to?

ROMANOFF: He wasn’t indifferent, he’d just been conditioned to believe that there wasn’t anything wrong with it.

MOTLEY: That’s a fact?

ROMANOFF: That’s my opinion based off of years of observation.

MOTLEY: So he encouraged you to kill?

ROMANOFF: He gave me advice that would keep me alive.

MOTLEY: To kill?

ROMANOFF: [_impatient_] Yes, to kill. It was kill or be killed and I was a child.

MOTLEY: Relax, Ms. Romanoff, this isn’t your trial.

ROMANOFF: Then why don’t you just ask me what you want to ask me? There’s no need to be so cagey, Mr. Motley.

MOTLEY: [_dry_] “The more you do it, the easier it gets.” That’s interesting.

ROMANOFF: “The more you do it, the easier it gets, the worse you feel.”

MOTLEY: Killing should never be easy.

ROMANOFF: Coming from a man who’s never been forced to kill.

MOTLEY: So you sympathize with the defendant?

ROMANOFF: Of course.

MOTLEY: You believe that his assassinations were justified?

ROMANOFF: Of course not.

MOTLEY: Well then, I’m confused—just where do you stand, Ms. Romanoff? You condemn his murders but absolve him simply because he admits to feeling guilty for them?

ROMANOFF: I condemn the murders of the Winter Soldier.

MOTLEY: [_irritated_] The winter soldier and James Barnes are one in the same.

ROMANOFF: Well if that’s what you think, Motley, I don’t believe I’ll be of much use to you.

MOTLEY: [_trite_] No further questions, Your Honor.

.

ROSENTHAL: Ms. Romanoff, I’d firstly like to thank you for your contributions to this case—willingly offering up your own memories to be observed by all present [_hesitating_] It’s very brave of you.

ROMANOFF: [_smirking_] Doesn’t feel that way, if I’m being honest. Besides, I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing it for him. [_gestures to defendant_]

ROSENTHAL: Of course. I’d like to touch on that, in a moment—but for now: you said you believed the defendant had been conditioned to kill, as you were. What led you to that conclusion?

ROMANOFF: [_stiffly_] It was like… watching someone sleepwalk. He was lucid but he—he wasn’t all there. Some of the girls used to joke that he was screaming behind his eyes.

ROSENTHAL: And did he ever wake up? Become conscious?

ROMANOFF: Once or twice. I submitted those instances as well and they were found admissible.

ROSENTHAL: [_nodding_] We’ll get to them. But Ms. Romanoff—when he woke up from his… dream-like state, as you put it—how did he behave?

ROMANOFF: He was… kind to me. He was always kind to me, asleep or awake. He was good to all of the girls.

ROSENTHAL: Good? How so?

ROMANOFF: He never hit us. He never yelled. All of the other instructors would, but not him. He was patient. At times he seemed almost reluctant. Pierce had tasked him with making us into the world’s best sharpshooters, but Barnes’ only passion was instructing us in self defense.

ROSENTHAL: Can you think of any instances that drastically highlighted the difference for you in terms of James Barnes and the Winter Soldier?

ROMANOFF: [_considering_] One time he brought back a cat.

[_scattered laughter_]

ROSENTHAL: [_smiling_] A cat?

ROMANOFF: [_smiling_] Sorry, it’s the first thing that came to mind. Yeah, a cat. It was this scraped up little tabby he said he’d found on the side of a road during a mission. He let me name it.

ROSENTHAL: What did you call it?

ROMANOFF: Melody.

MOTLEY: Objection—what does any of this have to do with the charges?

JUDGE: Overruled. Ms. Romanoff is a character witness, Rosenthal is establishing Mr. Barnes’ character. Rosenthal, continue.

ROSENTHAL: Melody the cat?

ROMANOFF: Yeah. [_laughs_] She had this god-awful meow. It sounded like—well, like a dying cat. I thought it was funny.

ROSENTHAL: And what happened to her?

ROMANOFF: [_stiff_] One of the girls found her and told a guard. Together they—they cut her open, exsanguinated her, and strung her up by a rope in the studio. I… I found her the next morning and cleaned up the mess before he ever knew. Never told him about it.

ROSENTHAL: [_softly_] That’s terrible.

ROMANOFF: Yeah. The girls got a big kick out of it, though. I heard them whispering about it in the halls for days.

ROSENTHAL: What a terrible environment to grow up in.

ROMANOFF: Yeah.

ROSENTHAL: And Mr. Barnes—did he ever express his discontent for your living conditions?

ROMANOFF: He’d make comments here and there—they chained us to the beds at night, see, and one time he said he didn’t think that was necessary.

ROSENTHAL: And what did they do to him for that?

ROMANOFF: They had this cattle rod and they would—they used it on all of us when we spoke out of turn. [_rolling eyes_] They used it on him a lot.

ROSENTHAL: I can imagine. No further questions, Your Honor.

. 

[_Exhibit #18_: The year is 1997. NATASHA ROMANOFF and JAMES BARNES are alone in a cell with an UNCONSCIOUS WOMAN—the descriptors identify her as FLORENTIA CRAIOVEANU. She stirs. The two exchange words. Things grow heated. BARNES grows distressed. ROMANOFF and BARNES argue. BARNES kills CRAIOVEANU; ROMANOFF leaves, only to be accosted by ALEXANDER PIERCE in the hallway. BARNES comes to her defense.]

.

MOTLEY: Well, I think I speak for us all when I say that was utterly horrendous to witness.

ROMANOFF: Try living it.

MOTLEY: I can’t imagine.

ROMANOFF: Definitely wasn’t ideal.

MOTLEY: I’d like to ask you a few questions that might make you uncomfortable, Ms. Romanoff—

ROMANOFF: Don’t worry, I was built for worse.

MOTLEY: [_hesitating_] Had Alexander Pierce ever made advances such as the one we just witnessed—had he ever made them before?

ROMANOFF: Not before, but a few times after.

MOTLEY: How far did it go?

ROMANOFF: Are you asking if he raped me?

MOTLEY: Ms. Romanoff—

ROMANOFF: No, he didn’t rape me.

MOTLEY: I’m glad to hear it.

ROMANOFF: Sure.

MOTLEY: So there you are—thirteen years old, ordered to execute a woman they told you was a traitor, and the Winter Soldier is so eager to kill, he does it for you.

ROMANOFF: I’m sorry, Motley, are you visually impaired?

MOTLEY: [_affronted_] No, I’m not—

ROMANOFF: Then how the hell did you get _that _out of what you just saw?

MOTLEY: Ms. Romanoff, you see a man who took small mercies on you in a dangerous situation. Your view of him is glorified. What I just saw was an unstable man acting out as a result of… malfunctions in his programming, shall we say.

ROMANOFF: [_muttering in Russian_]

MOTLEY: Ms. Romanoff, please—

ROMANOFF: He was protecting me.

MOTLEY: Protecting you from a woman tied up in a chair?

ROMANOFF: I thought we established this wasn’t my trial.

MOTLEY: Protecting you, then, from Pierce?

ROMANOFF: _Obviously_.

MOTLEY: And yet you made no move to push him away?

ROSENTHAL: Objection!

BARNES: Are you _fucking _kidding me?!

JUDGE: Order! _Order!_

ROMANOFF: Barnes, stand down—

BARNES: Fuck that, I’m standing _up_—

JUDGE: _Mr. Barnes!_

ROMANOFF: James.

BARNES: [_indiscernible muttering_]

MOTLEY: You see what I mean, ladies and gentlemen? _Unstable. _All I had to do was say something mildly provoking and he goes wild. He’s like a caged animal at the zoo—

STEVE ROGERS: Oh, for the love of god, I can’t sit here and listen to this—

ROMANOFF: _Boys_.

ROGERS: What the fuck does he know?! This is _ridiculous_—

JUDGE: Mr. Rogers, if you don’t settle down I’m going to have to ask you to leave the courtroom.

ROGERS: Oh, you call this a courtroom?

ROMANOFF: Steve, I swear to god—Wilson, get him out of here.

JUDGE: Do I need to call for a recess? Or will you all stop behaving like _school children_ so that we might conduct these proceedings in an orderly fashion?

ROMANOFF: I’m good. Are you good, Motley?

MOTLEY: Just fine.

JUDGE: Then proceed.

MOTLEY: Thank you, Your Honor. Ms. Romanoff, you denied in the tape, but I’d like your honest answer while you’re on the stand: did the Winter Soldier ever make any inappropriate advances on you during your time together—

BARNES: Are you insane?!

ROGERS: For god’s sake—

JUDGE: That’s quite enough! I’m calling for a recess! We reconvene in fifteen minutes—which I _pray _is enough time for you all to settle yourselves.

.

“I can’t believe that. _God. _What the fuck. Did you see that?”

“I was there,” Sam says dryly.

He doesn’t look impressed: arms folded over his chest, leaning against the gleaming marble wall in a hall by the facilities. Steve has been pacing up and down the stretch of it for near on five minutes.

“I can’t believe they—”

“Hey.”

Steve rounds at the sound of Natasha’s voice. Her expression suggests that she is bleeding on the inside or worse.

“Nat, what happened to you, I—”

“You need to get it together,” she cuts through. “If you want this to go well for him, you need to bite your tongue and shut the fuck up, understood?”

“But he—”

“I don’t care.”

“But—”

“I _don’t care. _Do you hear me?” Natasha puts her hand on his arm, small and pale but strong. “Look at me. I don’t care. I’ll endure whatever I need to in order to get him out of this, do you understand? I’ve faced a whole lot worse.”

Steve’s chest aches like his ribs are broken. His heart is pounding so wildly, it’s no doubt bruised his sternum by now. He can’t seem to settle.

“He still won’t look at me.”

He had been looking at Nat. They’d locked eyes across the room and she had held his gaze, forcing him back down into his seat. Whatever runs between them is deeper than Steve had ever imagined, and he’s starting to get an idea of the flood that brought them here, that created them.

“If it were me up there, man, I wouldn’t be looking at you, either,” Sam says, resting a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

Steve shakes his head. “This is… I knew it was gonna be hard, but Jesus… I don’t know how much more of it I can take, and if _I’m_ feeling like this—”

“Don’t think about that,” Nat says. “That’ll only make it worse.”

_Don’t think about it_, like it’s that easy, like his brain isn’t hard-wired to think about Bucky and only Bucky, always; like there’s an off switch for the need to protect and save and hold.

“Come on,” Sam says. “Let’s sit down, okay, man? Just relax for a minute.”

. 

MOTLEY: I apologise for the earlier fuss, Ms. Romanoff.

ROMANOFF: Don’t worry, I’m used to it.

MOTLEY: Right. Of course. Back to our prior line of questioning: has James Barnes ever laid a hand on you in a non-platonic pretense?

ROMANOFF: No.

MOTLEY: Not ever?

ROMANOFF: Never.

MOTLEY: To your knowledge, did he ever make advances toward any of the other girls?

ROMANOFF: Absolutely not.

MOTLEY: [_pause_] What about Pierce? Did he ever assault any of the other girls besides yourself?

ROMANOFF: I heard things.

MOTLEY: What sorts of things?

ROMANOFF: Just… [_hesitating_] Girls have a way of talking about everything without saying anything at all. It was like that. Implications. Looks. Whispers. Nothing concrete.

MOTLEY: But it wouldn’t surprise you?

ROMANOFF: No.

MOTLEY: And so, when Pierce made his advances that night and James Barnes pushed him away—there’s no reason to think he might have been jealous? Maybe he was vying for your attention, maybe he wanted you all to himself?

ROMANOFF: [_flat_] No.

MOTLEY: Really?

ROMANOFF: Really.

MOTLEY: So we’re meant to believe that a murderer just so happened to take pity on one girl out of twenty six, despite, oh—blowing up an orphanage full of children in 1956, murdering Stacy Kent’s daughter in cold blood in 1962, and breaking the neck of Allison Williams, a four year old girl who walked in on the Winter Soldier beating her father to death?

ROMANOFF: [_pause_] Are you accusing me of lying?

MOTLEY: Not at all. You were a little girl. Perhaps you blocked it out, or—

ROMANOFF: James Barnes is my brother. He was my first and only friend for a very, very long time.

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: No further questions, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Very well. Rosenthal?

ROSENTHAL: Thank you, Your Honor. Ms. Romanoff, I’m still reeling from what I just witnessed. The trauma—god, I can’t even begin to commend you on your bravery.

ROMANOFF: [_smiling_] Thanks.

ROSENTHAL: You were thirteen, probably scared out of your mind, I imagine.

ROMANOFF: Well it’s… it’s hard to feel fear like that when you’re so numb to it. You don’t exactly realise there’s anything to be afraid of. It’s just the way things are.

ROSENTHAL: Would you say that James Barnes made you see things a different way, at times?

ROMANOFF: Yes. He was—underneath all the bad they built around him, there was something different. It was just—he was _good_ in a way I’d never known another human being could be.

ROSENTHAL: You said he was your friend.

ROMANOFF: Yes.

ROSENTHAL: Would you still consider him your friend today?

ROMANOFF: Yes.

ROSENTHAL: Even after having learned all that you have?

ROMANOFF: He didn’t do those things. I know what it’s like to have monsters get inside of your head and take control—and I didn’t have it nearly as bad as he did. SHIELD set me up with a specialist and I was going there for years to break my programming. If you ask me, that’s all he needs, because the good is still right there underneath.

ROSENTHAL: [_pause_] You believe that his actions the night Pierce assaulted you were to protect you?

ROMANOFF: I do.

ROSENTHAL: Did he ever ask you for anything in return?

ROMANOFF: No, never.

ROSENTHAL: Did he ever practise violence toward Pierce on your behalf again?

ROMANOFF: Yes, once.

ROSENTHAL: When was this?

ROMANOFF: When I was sixteen. We tried to escape.

.

[_Exhibit #19_: The year is 1999. NATASHA ROMANOFF lies chained to her bed. JAMES BARNES kneels beside her, using a bobby pin to fiddle with the lock. ROMANOFF wakes abruptly. They speak in whispers so low, captions appear along the bottom of the hologram. 

[CUT TO: ROMANOFF and BARNES attempting to escape before being thwarted by YELENA BELOVA and ALEXANDER PIERCE. The two are cuffed and dragged down dark hallways. 

[CUT TO: BARNES screams silently. It is clear he is being electrocuted. The subtitles read: _Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car._ There is no sound. BARNES goes slack.]

PIERCE: Soldier. Ready to comply?

BARNES: [_flat_] Ready to comply.

.

“Steve?”

“I—asthma attack—”

“No, Steve,” Sam is there but he’s not, he’s so far away, and his hands are on Steve’s shoulders but Steve can’t feel them; “Steve, this isn’t that.”

Cold. Something is cold. The floor, the wall that he’s braced against; but it feels like the ice, like it’s been there the whole time where the marrow of his bones was meant to be and now it is seeping out, freezing him from the inside. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe and Bucky—

“Steve, I need you to slow down for me.”

“I can’t—”

Then Sam is eye to eye with him. They are both kneeling. When—when had Steve fallen? When had he succumbed to the weight of the sky?

“In for four, out for six, remember?”

Steve remembers. This has happened before. They breathe when it does, because sometimes Steve gets so scared he forgets to do the only thing keeping him alive.

He breathes and the exhale is a sob. “Sam—”

“I know,” Sam says, rubbing Steve’s back. “Man, I know. I saw it too.”

It sounds like maybe Sam really does know, like maybe he understands just a fraction of the way Steve’s body is tearing itself apart atom by atom in penance for his stupid fucking mistake. “I didn’t look for him,” he sobs, “I just left him there all alone—Sam, I let them take him—”

“You didn’t know, Steve.”

“But I should have! I _should have!_”

_He would have. He would have known. He never would have given up._

“It’s my fault,” he whispers.

Sam sighs. “No, man. It’s not your fault, okay? I know it feels like it right now, and there’s nothing I can say to you that’s gonna make you feel differently about it, but Steve I swear to God this one isn’t on you.”

Steve covers his face with his hands and Sam crowds him a little, like to block him from view. It occurs to Steve that they might not be alone, but when he risks a glance he just sees empty hallway. Still Sam is warm so he doesn’t complain, it’s just not the right sort of warmth—a little too on the hot side for Steve.

“Do you want to go back in?”

They both know it’s really not a matter of _want_; Steve _has _to be in there. It is a matter of necessity. There is no other option.

But god, it hurts. Scores of hurt have maimed his heart, his body. Looking at Bucky—pleading with him and God and even the Devil for the stupid idiot to just _look back_—seeing him with his hollow cheeks and dark eyes has left Steve levelled.

He doesn’t want to think about the other things he saw; Bucky screaming and thrashing, Bucky killing, Bucky on the verge of tears so many times it was practically just the state he lived in. He doesn’t _want_to think about it but the thoughts come anyway.

“I’m good,” Steve whispers.

.

They interrogate Natasha for another two hours; they show Odessa, which Steve had heard about, but seeing it for real is an entirely different story. The point of view switches from Nat to Bucky—no, to the Winter Soldier—over and over.

The soldier’s face is utterly blank as he takes the shot. There are no nerves, there is no hesitation. He doesn’t appear to recognise Nat in the slightest.

The worst part could be that she’d recognised him; right before her eyes close they widen, and there’s fear there—fear like Steve has never seen from her.

The prosecutor grills Nat, demanding how she could possibly defend the man who shot a renowned nuclear physicist _through _her; Nat simply shrugs and says, “It wasn’t him. I don’t know how many times I have to reiterate that.”

“And what if it was?” Motley demands. “What if he really _did _know what he was doing, Ms. Romanoff? What if he was aware of your identity, what if he remembered who you were and tried to kill you anyway?”

Nat stares. She is silent for a long moment. Then her gaze flits to Bucky.

“He probably had a good reason, then.”

Motley’s face twists with frustration and Steve ends up laughing. Sam whacks his arm for it so Steve tries to keep quiet after that, listening while Bernadette gets Nat’s final testimony.

“Ms. Romanoff, are you afraid of my client?”

“I’m probably about as afraid of him as he is of me.”

“Would you say that you trust him?”

“With my life.”

“Is it significant, do you think, that we witnessed the Winter Soldier change his target from your temple to your abdomen? Turning what would have been a fatal blow to both you and Mrs. Kozak into a hit that gave you a chance to survive?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Pretty significant, I’d say.”

“Thank you, Ms. Romanoff. No further questions, Your Honor.”

.

**USA TODAY ** @USATODAY

Cap. Steve Rogers set to testify in Winter Soldier trial tomorrow morning:  amp.usatoday.com/908467

.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do.”

.

  
JUDGE: Before we begin, I would like to announce an amendment to the memory-viewing procedure; rather than witnessing them one by one followed by a brief testimony, we will watch them one after the other and both the defense and prosecution will ask their questions afterward. Take notes as needed. Thank you.

. 

[_Exhibit #21_: The year is 1927. STEVE ROGERS confronts a much larger boy on the playground. The situation escalates until they are both fighting with their fists. ROGERS goes down. We see JAMES BARNES’ attention shift toward the commotion. He runs to help ROGERS, pulling the bully off of him before punching him in the jaw. BARNES grabs ROGERS’ hand and they run.

BARNES: Christ, Steve, what the hell is the matter with you?

ROGERS: [_panting_] You know… your Ma would wash… your mouth with soap… if she could hear you talkin’ like that.

BARNES: Yeah? Well she ain’t here, and I think she’d agree with me swearing on account of you’re real stupid, Steve.

ROGERS: [_laughs_] Did you see his face, though?

BARNES: His face? I can’t even see _your _face behind all that blood. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.

[BARNES drags ROGERS over to a spigot on the brickwork wall of the schoolhouse and helps him wash away the blood on his chin and mouth.]

ROGERS: I had him, you know.

BARNES: Uh-huh.

ROGERS: [_indignant_] I did, really!

BARNES: More like he had you.

ROGERS: [_scowling_] You know something, Buck?

BARNES: What’s that?

ROGERS: I hate you with every inch of my being.

BARNES: [_snorts_] I hate to break it to you, Stevie, but that’s not a lot of inches.]

.

[_Exhibit #22_: The captions read 1934; STEVE ROGERS lays shivering in a sweat soaked bed; JAMES BARNES sits beside him, gently dabbing at his forehead with a damp rag.

BARNES: Steve?

[ROGERS does not answer; he does not seem lucid.]

BARNES: [_whispering_] Hey, Stevie?

[_pause_]

BARNES: I know you’re not feeling so hot, but uh—if there’s a light, y’know, do me a favor and don’t go into it? Just once in your life don’t be a stubborn asshole and—and stay with me? Please?

[ROGERS starts to cough. BARNES is visibly worried. He takes ROGERS’ hand and rolls him onto his side, sliding off the bed as he does so to kneel beside it. He holds ROGERS’ hand to his forehead.]

BARNES: Hey, uh, God? If you’re—if you’re listening—and I don’t know why you would be, I mean, I’m just one poor schmuck who doesn’t really deserve much from you; it’s not like I ever took Sunday school seriously or said my nightly prayers but… please, can you just—just don’t take my idiot from me? Not yet? ’Cuz I really need him. [_tearfully_] Please, please don’t take him away. Not like this.

[BARNES starts to cry, silently. He then falls asleep. Time passes—four hours. BARNES awakes sharply at the sound of ROGERS grunting]

ROGERS: [weakly] Buck?

BARNES: [_tearfully_] Christ, are you okay? How are you feeling?

ROGERS: Your eyes are red. Were you crying?

BARNES: [_laughing_] You almost die and you’re worried about me? Fuck you, Rogers.]

.

Exhibit #23 displays a memory from long ago that Steve had remembered because it simply won’t leave him; one of his last days with Bucky—when his best friend saved his life; and hours before then, when they had knelt in front of a basin and washed Bucky’s stupid cat together.

Bucky falling is the most vivid of all of them. It probably has to do with the fact that Steve has replayed it over and over in his head a thousand times; it is the bright white hellscape of his nightmares, it haunts his every waking moment. Bucky is there and then gone in a heartbeat; the Fates has devised an almost inconsequential end for him, it had seemed. Bucky, screamed swallowed by the snow and screeching train. He had deserved better. He had deserved to go out boldly, loudly, in a way that left a mark on something besides Steve’s soul.

It all plays out in front of the courtroom and Steve can feel their eyes fly to him after each sequence end, rapt, awed, shocked.

Steve, for his part, can’t blame them.

Not when the old Bucky’s expression is approximate to a gaping wound when he looks at Steve; like he is something to be worshipped, desired, loved, or saved.

Not when he sees everything he missed the first time around, and feels it all over again like it’s happening right here, right now.

Not when the Bucky of now, on the dock, stares down at his lap and refuses to look up no matter how hard Steve stares, no matter how many silent pleas he sends.

. 

MOTLEY: Mr. Rogers, good morning.

ROGERS: I don’t know about good, but sure.

MOTLEY: What we just witnessed… I won’t lie, it’s a lot to take in. Your heroism certainly shines through.

ROGERS: _My _heroism? Are you kidding me?

MOTLEY: Please, I meant no offense.

ROGERS: Yeah, well. Flattery won’t do you any good where I’m concerned, son.

[_scattered laughter_]

MOTLEY: I—Mr. Rogers, I would like to ask you a few questions you might consider invasive or inappropriate but that I, in light of what we just saw, can’t overlook. Is that alright?

ROGERS: Ask away.

MOTLEY: Mr. Rogers, are you a homosexual?

[_pause_]

ROGERS: You want to know if I’m gay?

MOTLEY: Yes.

ROGERS: No.

MOTLEY: No?

ROGERS: I believe bisexual is the word. At least, that’s what I read. The world changes so fast these days, it’s hard to keep up.

MOTLEY: [_pause_] And was Mr. Barnes aware of this?

ROGERS: [_shrugs_] I don’t know.

MOTLEY: So the two of you were never romantically involved?

ROGERS: No.

MOTLEY: Were you aware of his feelings toward you?

ROGERS: To what feelings are you referring?

MOTLEY: His romantic desires, Mr. Rogers. Were you made aware, before or during the war, that he was romantically interested in you?

ROGERS: No, I wasn’t.

MOTLEY: No?

ROGERS: Believe me, if I had, things probably would’ve rolled a lot differently.

MOTLEY: Are you saying you reciprocate his feelings?

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: Mr. Rogers?

ROGERS: I love Bucky. I’ve loved him since before I even knew what that word meant and I’ll love him until I’m so old I forget again.

[_murmurs_]

MOTLEY: [_considering_] Mr. Rogers, could you please do me a favor and read aloud paragraphs 1-4 from Exhibit #25?

ROGERS: “There is a monster inside me, a blackness in my veins where the blood is meant to be. I’m terrified of it and wonder if it’s always been there or if this war has bred and borne it. I wonder: when it ends, what will I be except a murderer?” [_pause_] I’m sorry, why am I reading this?

MOTLEY: The rest of it please, Mr. Rogers.

ROGERS: [_sighs_] “Maybe one day I can go back home, battered and defeated and broken and hating myself. I don’t think I belong there anymore. I think here in the sorrow is where I’m thriving, here where I can pretend there’s beauty in dead things.” [_pause_] “Killing is an art, and as with everything, I’m fucking exceptional at it. I despise it, but I will take a thousand lives and more in your name.”

MOTLEY: And that doesn’t disturb you?

ROGERS: All due respect, but have you ever fought in a war?

MOTLEY: No, Mr. Rogers, I haven’t. But frankly, I don’t see how anything you have to say about it will change the fact that Mr. Barnes readily admits to _enjoying _the act of killing—

ROGERS: He didn’t say he enjoyed it—

MOTLEY: He even goes so far as to _justify _it all by claiming he’s doing it for you—

ROGERS: I’m sorry, are you saying the killing of Nazis isn’t justified enough?

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: No, Mr. Rogers, that’s not what I’m saying.

ROGERS: Really? Because it sure sounds like it to me.

MOTLEY: Mr. Rogers, he asks the question himself. “What will I be, except a murderer?” Even he knew. He enjoyed the war, enjoyed having the excuse to take as many lives as he wanted.

ROGERS: This is fucking ridiculous.

JUDGE: [_sharply_] Mr. Rogers.

ROGERS: What? I’m supposed to sit here and listen to this shit? What do you know, Motley? Have you ever spent eighteen hours a day trudging through cold, wet muck, looking over your shoulder, sleeping with one eye open, killing people because there was just no other damn choice? Sometimes you—you have to pretend it’s what you want, otherwise you go crazy. And this—the men we killed, the HYDRA operatives, they weren’t good men. The fact that he feels guilt over it, calls himself a monster for killing evil men—it says the opposite of what you’re trying to prove—

JUDGE: Mr. Rogers, I am going to have to ask you to settle down and let Mr. Motley continue his line of questioning.

ROGERS: [_sighs_] God. Fine.

MOTLEY: [_terse_] Thank you. Mr. Rogers, if you could please read aloud the first paragraph of Exhibit #26?

ROGERS: “You’re one dumb piece of shit, you know that? You fucking asshole. You traipse through here two feet taller than you should be and what’s that gonna get you, huh? You’re a fucking elephant out here—” [_laughs_] “You’re bigger than a fucking tank.”

MOTLEY: You find that amusing?

ROGERS: Well, sure.

MOTLEY: So you don’t think it’s at all possible that Mr. Barnes resented you? That maybe he resented you so greatly he conspired with the very people that held him captive in Azzano—and the fight we just witnessed, the one that resulted in his supposed death, wasn’t a set-up to have you killed? Perhaps all along it was the _plan _for Mr. Barnes to fall. Perhaps he got tired of being ordered around by his inexperienced best friend and as a result, deflected from the US Army—

ROGERS: Alright, you know what? That’s just might be the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard in my whole life.

MOTLEY: Sorry?

ROGERS: Good, you should be.

MOTLEY: Mr. Rogers, I believe that you are biased toward Mr. Barnes. I believe that your romantic desires are clouding your judgement where he is concerned—which very possibly could have been his intention all along—

ROGERS: Bucky didn’t _make _me love him—

MOTLEY: That night at the HYDRA base, we witnessed him commit an act of unnecessarily brutal violence—

ROGERS: [_dry_] To one of his so-called colleagues, according to you.

MOTLEY: Mr. Barnes is unhinged and has been for some time! It’s plain to see! He exhibits mentally unstable behaviours, and we have documentation of that very instability in written form! He acknowledges his violent nature, acknowledges his taste for killing, and _still _you deny it?

ROGERS: Yeah.

MOTLEY: _How?!_

ROGERS: Nobody came out of that war stable. Nobody was ever the same. You get a little violent, you get a little unhinged. There’s something—there’s something inside of all of us like that; an animal that wakes up when it gets a taste for blood. Men become feral when they live like dogs, and that’s how we were living. It wasn’t civilised, it was dirty, it was bloody, it was a mess—_we _were a mess. You watch men you think of as brothers die every other day, maybe your only comfort is the letter from home you got four months ago—you start to wonder if there was ever anything before the war at all. Were you ever anything but a monster? It’s hard to remember, because all you can think about are the terrible things you’ve done and seen.

MOTLEY: With all due respect, Mr. Rogers, I believe your vision to be skewed.

ROGERS: Well, right back at you, Motley.

MOTLEY: No further questions, Your Honour.

JUDGE: Very well. Rosenthal?

ROSENTHAL: Thank you, Your Honour. Mr. Rogers, thank you for agreeing to testify.

ROGERS: Of course.

ROSENTHAL: I know how hard all of this must be for you.

ROGERS: [_shrugs_] I’m willing to do anything for Buck.

ROSENTHAL: That’s certainly admirable. Before we delve any deeper, I’d like to have you read aloud the second paragraph of Exhibit #26?

ROGERS: “Biggest fucking target for a thousand miles, and what for? Why couldn’t you have just stayed at home? Why’d you have to go and make it so much easier for the bad guys to kill you? I wanted you safe.”

ROSENTHAL: He wanted you safe.

ROGERS: Yeah. I never listened, though.

ROSENTHAL: This was a common theme for the two of you, as we witnessed in some of your earlier memories; Mr. Barnes fought for you that day on the playground and took care of you when you were ill. Does that sound like the behaviour of a deranged man to you?

ROGERS: No, ma’am.

ROSENTHAL: He saved your life that day in the Alps.

ROGERS: He… he did.

ROSENTHAL: You felt that he cared for you? You considered him to be your best friend?

ROGERS: I did. I do.

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Rogers, if your situations had been reversed that day—if it had been you that had fallen and Mr. Barnes who survived—do you think that we would still be in this room today? Do you think that it would be you that I’m defending instead of him? That you, too, would have succumbed to the mind-altering and brainwashing that HYDRA inflicted upon my client?

ROGERS: Yeah, I—[_pause_]—no, no we wouldn’t because he wouldn’t have—Bucky would never have just given up the way I did. Bucky, I’m sorry—

JUDGE: Mr. Rogers, I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from directly addressing the defendant—

ROGERS: I’m so fucking sorry. I should have tried harder—I should have looked for you. I would have looked for you but they kept telling me there wouldn't be a body—[_tearfully_] I’m so fucking sorry, Bucky, it’s all my fault—

JUDGE: Mr. Rogers, you must calm down—

BARNES: [_shaking head_] You’re a fucking idiot if you think I could ever blame you, you know that?

ROGERS: I’m so sorry—

JUDGE: Mr. Rogers, please—

BARNES: Stop it with that shit, would you? You’re breaking my heart, Stevie. Don’t start crying on me when I’m over here in chains.

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Rogers, you said you believed he would have saved you?

ROGERS: Yeah, of course.

ROSENTHAL: Could you please read the first few lines of Exhibit #27? Stop at “gratefully”.

ROGERS: “I can’t get it out of my head: you standing on that catwalk ready to go out, and for what? You never know when to stop, and fuck, I guess I don’t either. I told you I wouldn’t leave you and I meant that. I would have burned with you, died with you; I would and will suffer all measures of agony in your name, willingly and gratefully.”

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: To what incident is this referencing?

ROGERS: It was—it was the night I saved Bucky from the camp in Azzano. The place was going up and I—I was about to go up with it, and I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t.

ROSENTHAL: He was willing to die for you.

ROGERS: Yeah.

ROSENTHAL: Speaks to his measure of loyalty, doesn’t it?

ROGERS: It does.

ROSENTHAL: There was nothing to gain by befriending you was there? That is to say, from a socio-economic or social standpoint? You were the kid everyone picked on and he stuck up for you. You were sick and he prayed for you. You were dying and he was perfectly willing to die right beside you.

ROGERS: I… yeah.

ROSENTHAL: When your altercation took place in the helicarrier, why did Mr. Barnes stop hitting you?

ROGERS: I told him… I said something we used to say to each other. It—I guess it was enough to break through because he—he seemed to almost know me, and when I fell—I was out of it, but someone had to have dragged me out of that river—

ROSENTHAL: You believe Mr. Barnes saved you?

ROGERS: I do. I don’t know who else could have done that.

ROSENTHAL: Let’s examine that. How much do you weigh, without your armour?

ROGERS: About two-fifty.

ROSENTHAL: And with it?

ROGERS: Two-sixty, two-seventy.

ROSENTHAL: Soaking wet.

ROGERS: Easily two-seventy-five.

ROSENTHAL: Injured, couldn’t even pick yourself up. You were unconscious?

ROGERS: That’s right.

ROSENTHAL: No one else was on the scene?

ROGERS: No.

ROSENTHAL: So we can safely assume, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it was indeed Mr. Barnes who picked you up and dragged you out of that river to safety. With his enhancements, it wouldn’t be a too-difficult task—beyond, of course, the mental hoops he would have been jumping through.

ROGERS: Exactly.

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Rogers, when you’re injured, how long does it typically take for you to heal?

ROGERS: You’ll have to be more specific.

ROSENTHAL: A concussion. It takes the average person about a week and a half to recover from. What about you?

ROGERS: A day or two, sometimes less.

ROSENTHAL: Thank you. I would like to present to the court Exhibits #28 and #29. Number twenty-eight is a brain scan taken by HYDRA in 1990. The file is marked Солдат—the Russian word for ‘Soldier’, which is how many of the Winter Soldier paperwork is classified. This is post-electroshock therapy. Do you see all of the blackened areas? That’s dead brain matter.

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: This is from an MRI given to James Barnes last week. These same areas of the brain that were dead twenty-odd years before—here in the cerebral cortex, especially—they’re not dead anymore.

[_pause_]

ROSENTHAL: Mr. Barnes doesn’t just _wake up. _It’s not just his strong will, it’s not a matter of whether or not he’ll remember the man he once was—it’s a matter of _when _he will. James Barnes _heals. _It takes time, but it’s how his body is made to function. It’s inevitable that he will recover from the torture inflicted upon him—at least, in the physical sense. [_pause_] James Barnes is an injured man who simply needs time to recover.

.

Bernadette grills him for a little while longer, asking him a number of questions about the various ways and times Bucky’s saved his life; she asks about Shitty the cat and that gets laughs, but Steve can’t smile because their life isn’t some sitcom. This isn’t _theirs _to find amusement in, it should just belong to him and Bucky.

Finally, drained, Steve steps down from the stand.

He watches them take Bucky away again, but this time unlike all the others, Bucky looks over his shoulder. His mouth quirks up just as the doors close to shut him away and Steve’s heart fissures in two.

Sam claps a hand on his shoulder. “It’s time for another trial run.”

The trial run is the twenty-eighth of its kind, part of the overarching experiment in which Sam tries to get Steve blackout drunk. So far, he’s only succeeded in getting just a little tipsy, and that takes at least half the liquor supply of a whole bar.

Steve wishes he could be drunk for this.

“So,” Sam says, once they’re safely tucked into a back booth, “you in _love, _love, huh?”

“Sam—”

“No it’s fine, I get it,” Sam holds up a hand, “you know, you’re used to keeping that part of your life on the down low. They didn’t have Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, they just had Get Your Ass Out of Compton and I get that—but damn, Steve, I… I didn’t realise it was so heavy with you two.”

“Sam—”

“I mean, sure, you dragged my ass from here to Timbuktu for that idiot, and maybe I should have seen it—but I just thought, you know, you’d do the same for me—”

“And I would—”

“Yeah, but that’s… Steve, that kind of love is the kind everyone dreams about, you know?”

Steve looks down at his half full glass of beer, hands wound around it, trying not to shake. It’s not something he’s used to talking about or even thinking about. He had locked it away when they were kids, wrangled it down repeatedly when they were in their twenties sharing a bed every night; and then somewhere along the way it had just sort of spilled out the way the sketches used to, soaking into the page.

He hadn’t acknowledged it. When a certain light would strike Bucky he’d tell himself the only reason he was committing it to memory was to draw it later, and not so he could replay it in the dark of night where no one could hear, no one would have to know.

It’s… it’s always been there and yet it feels as fresh and frightening as a newborn. He doesn’t know what the hell to do with it.

“Steve?”

“Hmm?”

Sam kicks his shin under the table. “You’re blushing.”

Steve looks up. “I’m not—”

Sam laughs. “Yes, you are. Damn, I have _never _seen you that red.”

Steve lets his head fall back. “I just really miss him.”

“Yeah, I know. I can tell.” Sam kicks him again, lighter this time. “But hey, when this is all over you’ll never have to again, right?”

“Don’t say things like that.”

“Like what?”

“Hopeful things.” Steve frowns. “I don’t… I can’t hope.”

Sam snorts. “Steve, let me tell you something: he doesn’t get off, there’s no way in hell I’m letting the love of your life rot in some jail cell forever, okay? I’ll bust him out myself if I have to.”

It might just be the nicest thing anyone other than Bucky has ever said to him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, man.”

.

**Buzzfeed ** @Buzzfeed

Let the Record Show That Steve Rogers Would Die for James Barnes—And I Would Die for Them buzz-283729

**AP News ** @AP

Sgt. James Barnes to take the stand tomorrow ap.moble-99074

.

It plays like one of those old war movies—the ones Steve had been unlucky enough to catch the beginnings of only to walk right out after a few minutes because he just couldn’t take it.

None of them were right and at the same time they were just too close.

But this—Bucky running through a flaming field at night, the ground rattling, men screaming, bullets flying; this is real. It had been real when Johnny Lawson weakly clawed at Bucky and begged for help, real when Bucky fumbled for his tags and asked, “You Catholic, Johnny?” holding the kid’s guts in his hand, steady as a rock.

He’d prayed with him: _Hail Mary, full of grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of the womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._

He’d closed Johnny’s eyelids gently when he died, softly lowered him down, and then he’d run on to the next kid.

It keeps on rolling no matter how much Steve wishes it would just fucking _stop. _Bucky stands at a pulpit in a shelled church and talks about Reggie Montague, about how he was brave even when he was begging for his father in death; Bucky is forced onto a table, strapped down, and injected with something that makes him scream and writhe; Bucky is hurrying through a darkened wood, rifle at the ready, crouching down and praying again: _My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, _and a Nazi goes down, _I detest all my sins because of thy punishments, _another bullet, another dead man, _but most of all because they offend thee._

The last Nazi and Bucky gets him in his crosshairs, cleaves his skull as easy as breathing, and whispers, _I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin._

Then he is saving Steve, and Steve is saving him, and it keeps happening over an over. They’re stuck on a loop until they get to London and Bucky dances with Rosetta Lee—a little old woman, now, who had quietly entered the courtroom that morning and caused no fuss but garners whispers and looks as soon as they realise it’s her.

She guesses about Steve and Bucky rips himself away, asks why she would even want to touch him, and it hurts so damn much Steve ends up putting his head in his arms, resting against the backs of the seats before him, staring at his shoes and just listening while Bucky fucking dies again.

And then comes the bitter thereafter.

. 

[_Exhibit #46_: JAMES BARNES fades in and out of consciousness; when he is lucid enough to, he screams; we glimpse flashes of medical doctors performing tests and brutally sawing away pieces of his arm.]

[_Exhibit #47_: JAMES BARNES is strapped down to a chair and gaged so that he stops screaming; he is electrocuted for twenty minutes.]

[_Exhibit #48_: JAMES BARNES lashes out and strangles a HYDRA agent with his metal arm, which at this point reaches only the junction of his elbow; CUT TO him being dragged down a hallway, poked with a cattle rod until he kneels. He is water boarded and scolded while the WINTER SOLDIER command words play on loud speaker.]

[_Exhibit #49_: JAMES BARNES is roused from cryo. He flexes his metal arm wonderingly, observing that it reaches his bicep now. A doctor snaps his fingers in front of BARNES’ face. He is ARNIM ZOLA.

ZOLA: Asset, report.

BARNES: Ready… ready to comply.

ZOLA: Did you dream, Soldier?

BARNES: N-No.

ZOLA: Are you lying? It’s against your programming to lie to your handlers.

BARNES: Not. Not lying. No dreams.

[ZOLA steps closer, paws at BARNES’ face.]

ZOLA: What are you?

BARNES: HYDRA’s hidden fist. The Winter Soldier.

ZOLA: Who is James Barnes?

BARNES: [_confused_] Who?

ZOLA: [_smiles_] Good boy.]

.

MOTLEY: Mr. Barnes.

BARNES: Howdy.

MOTLEY: I assume I was meant to be moved by what I just watched.

BARNES: [_shrugs_] I don’t know. I just gave up what I could remember.

MOTLEY: I find it incredibly convenient that you have somehow managed to “remember” all of the things that paint you as a victim and none of the things that prove what a murderer you are.

[_murmurs_]

BARNES: [_pause_] I’m not trying to tell you that those people didn’t die. I’m not gonna say it wasn’t my hands that did it, all the things that killed them. I’m… [_sighs_] My sister Becca had this voodoo doll. She kept it from our Ma for weeks, and rightly so, too, because boy did she freak out when she found it in Becca’s coffer—started screaming about our gypsy blood and all—anyway, it’s like that. The concept, I mean. Like they said the right words and suddenly my body was moving on its own and my head was empty. I was just gone.

MOTLEY: And if I don’t believe you?

BARNES: [_shrugs_] Then I don’t know what else to tell you.

MOTLEY: Do you know what I think, Mr. Barnes? I think you _liked _killing. I think you developed a taste for it and then kept coming back for more, and I think the war gave you an excuse to ravage Nazi Germany, but I think you got tired of following orders. Being with HYDRA meant you could complete your missions as you liked it; they offered you immortality, brute strength, and all the resources to murder and terrorise as you pleased. Presidents, executives, senators; mothers, sons, brothers, daughters—you have killed so many of them. So many, in fact, we don’t even have an exact number. [_pause_] I think you’re lying about what you’ve forgotten, and I think if you were presented with the right circumstances you could easily snap and kill again. I think you’re dangerous and frankly, I’d sleep better knowing you were locked away for life.

[_pause_]

MOTLEY: Speaking of sleeping at night, how do you manage?

BARNES: Well… Stark gave me this stuffed Captain America bear and sometimes I hold onto that when the bad memories get to be too much.

[_pause; surprised laughter_]

MOTLEY: I’m… sorry? What?

BARNES: What I said. I have this bear—

MOTLEY: [_disdainful_] No further questions, Your Honour.

JUDGE: Rosenthal?

ROSENTHAL: Thank you, Your Honour. Mr. Barnes, are you a religious man?

BARNES: Not particularly, no.

ROSENTHAL: And yet you prayed in those clips we just saw. Why is that?

BARNES: I, uh… sometimes you just… you need to believe in something. Most times I just—I believed in Steve. When he wasn’t… I guess I just needed someone else to turn to.

ROSENTHAL: But you were raised Christian?

BARNES: That’s right.

ROSENTHAL: And yet you prayed with a Catholic boy as he lay dying to bring him some measure of comfort in his last moments.

BARNES: I… yeah. I just thought—y’know, if it were me—I’d want someone. To hold my hand, to help me. It’s hard to remember clearly—

ROSENTHAL: Of course.

BARNES: I know that it happened a lot, though. A lot of kids died young and I remember being angry about it. I remember thinking about how we were just expendable. I didn’t want to see it that way, I wanted to remember what we were fighting for, but it got lost in all those bodies.

ROSENTHAL: I don’t mean to be insensitive, Mr. Barnes, but it seems to me that your life has been one horrific situation after the other. You were bullied as a child, you suffered through the Depression, then the war, and then HYDRA’s machinations. Can I ask you: if you were freed today, what would you do?

BARNES: I… I think I’d just like to go home.

ROSENTHAL: To Brooklyn?

[_pause_]

BARNES: [_softly_] Yeah. To Brooklyn.

.

**Buzzfeed ** @Buzzfeed

You Guys, Bucky Barnes sleeps with a Captain America Build-A-Bear at night and HAS THERE EVER BEEN ANYTHING MORE PURE??  buzz-bbsw/293839

.

_Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,_

_The defense has painted you a picture of a child who grew up to be a defenceless, brainwashed victim of HYDRA. And yet we witnessed with our own eyes as he bashed one of their heads against a wall in a pure, blind rage. We witnessed him beat a man to death and kill countless others. The tally of his victims is unknown and today, you have the ability to decide whether or not it rises or remains stationary. _

_We are not safe with James Barnes roaming our streets. Our children are not safe. Our politicians are not safe. It is not a matter of who James Barnes used to be, but a matter of who he has become: _

_A murderer. A monster. _

_I ask you, for the safety of all lives, on a scale that stretches far beyond American borders: find the defendant guilty as charged. _

_Thank you, _

_Attorney Gillian Motley_

_._

_Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,_

_My client has spent the entirety of his life doing his very best to protect. He saw a young boy in need of saving and so he saved him. He watched his country at war and so he joined the army ranks. He is not a victim, he is a survivor. _

_For fifty odd years he endured countless methods of torture. He lost the ability to think for himself. He did not believe he was human. The men who handled him referred to him as “it” and “the Asset.” They referenced medical care and their brainwashing methods as “maintenance” and “recalibration.” _

_He has endured a very long bad dream, but he is waking up now. After spending his entire life a captive, please, allow him the opportunity to be a free man for once. Know that if you find him not guilty, no lives will be lost. In fact, many might be saved at his hands. _

_He was willing to die for our country and its people. We are disloyal, ungrateful cowards if we cannot recognise the suffering he endured in our name._

_Find him not guilty. _

_Thank you,_

_Defense Attorney Bernadette Rosenthal_

.

“We the jury, in the case of the People of the United States of America vs. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, find the defendant…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :-)


	4. Chapter 4

_ Act Four _

_ad astra per aspera _

.

There’s new graffiti this week.

The Tuesday before, it had been a mural from some popular fantasy show Steve doesn’t care to track. This week, it is him: red, white, and blue, chin raised in defiance; and inside his frame, the black silhouette of a defeated man—his head is down, his shoulders slump, his hair falls into his eyes.

_That’s about right,_ Steve thinks.

The train screeches and groans as it comes to a stop. Steve’s head falls back when it kicks off again. His eyes close with the dull roaring of a subway car tearing fifty miles an hour down the Eighth Avenue Line.

He doesn’t much feel like thinking tonight. He’d contemplated running, but even that brings the odd chance that someone will recognise him and ask for a photo or even just to talk about the court case—and _God_, does Steve not want to think about _that_ most of all.

Ergo: the subway.

It’s quiet at three AM. In the car ahead there’s an old homeless man Steve had passed a fifty. In the car behind, a troubadour has given up on playing and is now sprawled out on the floor writing songs, a pencil between his teeth and a cigarette behind his ear.

Then there’s Steve.

They make for a pretty sad trio, he thinks.

Still, it’s better than moping in his empty apartment. It’s a nice place, but it’s still so new. He’d put down enough for a six month lease after Bucky’s trial, and once it’s up, he thinks he might just… leave.

Alaska. That sounds nice. Cold so he won’t have to feel. They say the air is fresh there and that you can see the stars, unlike here in New York. Plus, there’s the Aurora Borealis. That sounds… pretty nice. He could get a dog, a cabin. He could be left alone.

He could be really, really fucking lonely.

Who is he kidding? He can’t do Alaska. There’s nothing to distract him up there.

He thinks it would probably be like the Grand Canyon, in a way; standing at the mouth of Mother Nature, breathing in the empty rattle of her lungs. He can remember feeling small, lying on his back with nothing but black sky above. Cold and wishing Buck was there to stoke the fire. He’d gone for him; drawn him and faced his portrait toward the fault so that Bucky could see.

That had been around six months after he’d woken up. Steve had been relieved to find that, after seventy years, at least _that_ had not changed.

“You’d better not be listening to something sad.”

Steve opens his eyes. For a long second he just stares, because he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

“Buck—”

“Budge up, would you?”

Steve doesn’t even think before making space. Bucky plops down right beside him, heavy like he aches all over too.

“So?”

“What?”

There’s a hint of a smirk on Bucky’s lips. His eyes, heavy lidded, flicker down to the cord coming from the pocket of Steve’s leather jacket.

Steve finally gathers his wits. “Are you shitting me? A month and I don’t see you, but now you just drop in?”

Bucky doesn’t seem bothered. “I have a habit of doing that, don’t I?” he says, and then proceeds to fish the StarkPhone out of Steve’s pocket.

Steve, just because he’s not feeling particularly generous at the moment, grapples for it. Bucky leans far out of reach and laughs, and it is the best sound in the world, and Steve’s heart beats to it, and _why_ did Bucky have to go and do that? Now he can’t be mad anymore.

“Who the hell is Taylor Swift?”

Steve blinks. “Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to finally be the one who knows the answer to that?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow but hands the phone back. “Give me one of the things.”

“An earbud.”

“That sounds like a disease,” Bucky remarks, taking one anyway. “They should call it something else.”

Steve rolls his eyes. He presses play but doesn’t listen to the music, just looks at Bucky as he closes his eyes and leans back, like it’s nothing, like they do this every night.

Steve wishes they did.

“Buck?”

“Mmm?”

“You’re real, right? I’m not making you up in my head or anything?”

Bucky looks at him—really looks, maybe, for the first time since he sat down. “Is that something you do often?”

Steve does not answer. He can’t, physically. He does not think his mouth will work except to kiss or be kissed. There aren’t any words and there’s no noise in his brain. It’s gone silent like before he jumps off of buildings or bridges or freight cars.

Bucky reaches up and gently pulls the earbuds out.

Steve wishes his hand had reached higher, high enough to brush against his cheek.

“What I said, after the trial—”

“I know,” Steve finally chokes. “You need time. But Bucky—”

“Steve.” Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. “They took all of my words away from me before I even remembered what they were, you know? And I know I wouldn’t be sitting here right now if it hadn’t happened, but—”

“I get it.”

“You _don’t_.”

“I _do_,” Steve insists. “You feel exposed, right? Like they turned you inside out and debated whether or not your contents defined your character? I know. I’ve been there. I _am_ there.”

Bucky looks down at his hands. Steve does too, and wishes he could draw them. Then he laughs.

“What?” asks Buck.

“Nothing. I just didn’t think I’d ever—” he cuts himself off and instead reaches for Bucky’s wrists. “Can I?” he asks, because he’s learned to do that now, when he never would have had to before. Every part of Bucky had belonged to him, just like every part of Steve had belonged to Bucky, and he’d taken it for granted.

Bucky nods.

Then their skin touches, and it is warm, and Steve is alive as he slowly turns Bucky’s left hand over and traces the line of his palm down to a moon shaped white scar. Unlike with Steve, the serum given to him had not taken these marks away, and he couldn’t be more grateful.

“Do you see this?” he asks Bucky. “You got that when you were nine. You were trying to help my Ma open a can of—”

“Ambrosia,” Bucky finishes. He laughs. “That shit’s supposed to be the food of the Gods, but I remember taking one mouthful and wanting to puke my guts out.”

Steve grins, even though it hurts. “You remember that?”

“Yeah,” Bucky nods. “I do now. Sometimes it’s like that—I’ll hear something or see something and it just comes flooding back, you know?”

He pauses.

“I remember more when I’m with you.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. Instead he turns Bucky’s hand over and runs his thumb along the scar there. “You fell off your bike—”

“Into the gutter,” Bucky finishes. “It was winter. You fished me out—”

“And I tried to give you my coat, but you wouldn’t have it, said—”

“I said there was no sense in both of us dying.”

Steve can’t stop himself. He raises Bucky’s hand to his lips and kisses the scar, lingering too long but not caring. Bucky’s skin is warm and tastes like salt.

He doesn’t meet Bucky’s eyes after. It’s a minute before he feels it: the gentle pressure of Buck’s head coming to rest against Steve’s own.

In the next car over, the troubadour begins to sing again, and it sounds like _I’ll Be Seeing You._

. 

_one month earlier_

He keeps his head between his knees the way that Sam taught him too when the whole world gets to be too much.

He’d commandeered a conference room just so that he could breathe, because right now that’s all he needs, but of course it’s only five minutes later that someone is opening the door without knocking and slipping inside.

“I distinctly recall saying I needed a minute and that I didn’t want to talk to anyone, Nat.”

“Well, that’s a shame.”

Steve shoots to his feet and Bucky, Bucky who just got cleared of all charges and doesn’t even outrank him, smiles and says, “At ease, soldier.”

Steve braces a hand against the window just to keep himself upright. He thinks, otherwise, he’d be on his knees right now.

“Buck—”

“You look like you might be sick, Rogers,” says Bucky, and it’s too detached, too forced.

Steve swallows back bile and sinks down onto the floor, wedged between the wall and window. He still hasn’t taken his eyes from Bucky, who walks like he is still learning how to do it and scans the room constantly like something about it is going to change. He looks everywhere but Steve, even when he’s looking right _at_ Steve.

“Bucky…” Steve shakes his head. “I’m so sorry—”

“I thought we had gone over that.”

“But I—”

“I’m also quite certain we established you weren’t to blame.”

Steve’s brow furrows. He doesn’t know what to make of this—the clipped tones, the guarded body language. The Bucky that Steve had known had been wide open; he’d sat with his legs spread and he’d grinned without realising he was doing it. His emotions passed over his face like storm clouds. He was gaping, bleeding, and sometimes when Steve looks back on it, he thinks maybe sometimes Bucky was even begging to be devoured just with his eyes. They’d get heavy and dark, and they would burn like hot coals.

There is no fire now. There is a steel door, a stone face.

“Would you sit?” Steve asks, terrified of the answer.

But Bucky does, across from Steve rather than beside him.

“Bucky, I don’t—” he shakes his head, feels his eyes burn, and hates himself for it. “I don’t get—”

“Some mornings I wake up and I’m more Bucky,” he interrupts. “It doesn’t feel… _wrong_ to want to call you Stevie and keep you close to me. Other mornings—I don’t want anyone close to me, you understand? I don’t want to…”

“Hurt me?”

“Yes. Yeah. Hurt you.”

Steve swallows rough. “You wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Bucky says, hard. “The things I’ve done—”

“You didn’t do those things,” Steve insists, “it wasn’t you—”

“Maybe not, but I still see it when I sleep,” Bucky snaps. “It’s all I dream about, most nights. I just see faces—people I killed, people begging for mercy from me that I wasn’t… wasn’t _programmed_ to give them and—”

Steve reaches out but Bucky rips his hand away. “No.”

“Okay,” Steve breathes. “Okay, I won’t.”

“It’s not that I—”

Steve shakes his head. “I get it. It’s okay.”

The fingers on Bucky’s metal arm twitch. He catches Steve looking and flinches. “Sorry. It’s, uh… it’s always a little finicky when it’s first attached after a while without it. I’ve gone hours, even days, but never weeks before. It feels… heavy.”

Steve nods. “Makes sense.”

In the lull, Steve soaks in Bucky; head hung, hair in his eyes, beard unkept, cheeks shallow and eyes bruised. He is an angel; Steve wants to memorise him like this and in all other forms, because all of them are beautiful simply because they are _Bucky_.

Bucky catches his gaze and tilts his head. “I feel like I know what that look is, but I don’t have a name for it.”

Steve swallows dry. “Don’t worry about it.”

Bucky considers him for a long moment. Then he sits back on his haunches, elbows on his knees, a soldier one instant and just Buck the next.

“I came in here to see if you were okay. You didn’t look so good.”

Steve could laugh because at least _that_ hasn’t changed; Bucky coming to check on him, to make sure he’s good. He supposes habits like that just can’t be unlearned.

His silence Bucky takes for something bad. “Did you change your mind? About, uh, wanting me to get off?”

“What? God, Bucky, _no_,” Steve edges forward and Bucky flinches back and it _hurts_. He just wants to fucking hold him. He’s waited seventy damn years, a hundred years, to hold this stupid asshole and he still can’t. “Bucky, I just—seeing you like that—seeing what they did to you—”

Bucky looks down. “Right.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Yeah.”

“What I said up there—”

“Don’t.” Bucky finally looks up and this time he’s earnest, almost stern. “Don’t fucking say what you’re about to say to me right now, understood? Not—I need time. I need to find… a balance between who I was and who I am now, okay?”

“Bucky,” Steve shakes his head, feels the fear encroaching upon him, “_alone?_”

Bucky’s eyes turn sad. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

.

It’s two weeks after the subway until Steve sees Bucky again.

It’s the unlocked, slightly ajar front door that prompts him to pull out the firearm he keeps on him just in case. Steve creeps into his apartment slowly.

It’s dark. There are still unpacked boxes scattered around the open floor plan, stacked haphazardly, some even knocked over from Steve bumping into them in the middle of the night.

The light above the stove is on; it’s golden glow casts enough light into the hall for Steve to know that the way is clear, so he keeps close to the wall as he moves deeper into the apartment.

His bedroom door is wide open.

In the bed, under the covers, is Bucky.

Steve’s chest caves with relief and he sags against the doorjamb. He doesn’t even register when Bucky shifts. “Nice piece,” he says. “What is it?”

Steve blinks. “What? Oh—just a nine mil.”

Bucky snorts. He flops onto his back. “Basic.”

There’s a pause. Then Bucky says, “That’s how the kids say it. I heard them talking in a smoothie shop. They’ve apparently decided to drop all non-essential words from their speech, and our mothers thought we were getting stupid?”

Steve blinks. “You were in a smoothie shop?”

“That is, without a doubt, the least relevant part of what I just said.”

“I—is that it?”

Bucky frowns. Then he realises what Steve is looking at—the tips of two blue ears are just visible, poking up out of the sheets until Bucky pulls the bear all the way out. “His name is Grant. Don’t make it weird.”

“Right.” Steve bites his cheek to keep from smiling. “Right, it’s not weird.”

“You see? And now it’s weird.”

“Bucky.”

“What?”

“You’re in my bed. It was _already_ weird.”

Bucky frowns. “It’s our bed.”

“What?”

“You put my name on the lease,” he says, like this is absolutely something he should know already. “Besides, this is how we used to do it, right?”

Steve doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he just can’t help it. “Why are you here?”

Bucky, for his part, just shrugs. “I’m running an experiment,” he says, and pats the right side of the bed—it’s always been Steve’s side, empty or not.

“What experiment?”

Bucky speaks while Steve sets his gun down and works off his street clothes. “I can’t sleep, see. Remember how I told you at night it’s always bad things? Well, that hasn’t changed. I wanted to see if maybe—” he looks away, sheepish, and mumbles the rest.

Steve heard it, of course. The serum ensures that. Still he makes a show of not catching it.

“I wanted to see if maybe being close to you would help me sleep better,” Bucky repeats miserably.

Steve grins. He drops onto the bed and Bucky throws the covers over him. For a second he just keeps his eyes closed and his face turned into the pillow, hoping it isn’t red; he just needs the minute, because the knowledge that Bucky had sought him out for this is good enough to last a lifetime.

Then he feels something soft against his back.

“Did you just put your bear on me?”

“It’s like stacking rocks,” Bucky says. “You maybe got a little Captain America action figure I could add to the pile?”

Steve rolls his eyes, reaches behind, and grabs the bear. He examines the loved fur and sewn on smile. “Grant doesn’t help?”

Bucky shrugs. “Not enough. Why? You want me to go?”

Steve is grabbing Bucky’s wrist before he can stop himself. “_No_, no way, God, no.”

Bucky looks down at their connected limbs. He, like Steve, is realising he hadn’t flinched away. Steve tries not to make a big deal out of loosening his grip and slowly, gently, trailing his fingers down to grab Bucky’s hand.

Bucky stares.

“What?” Steve asks, trying to keep his voice calm though his racing heart surely belies the ruse.

“Feels good.”

“What does?”

“When you touch me,” Bucky says. “It feels—I like it.”

And just like on the train car, Steve can’t stop himself from bringing Bucky’s hand to his lips. He kisses his open palm this time, right over a seaming scar. “I like it, too,” he whispers, resting his cheek against Bucky’s hand.

“You got a beard. You didn’t used to have a beard. I like that, too.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Got any more you wanna lay on me?”

Bucky shrugs. “I think I’d rather just lay on you.”

And then he does, and Steve realises this is the first time he has ever held Bucky, who was always the bigger of them. After the serum they had been traipsing around Nazi Germany or at each other’s throats and there hadn’t been any of this at all. In foxholes they faced away from each other, in hotel rooms and hostels they did the same out of habit.

Now Bucky works his way to resting his head on Steve’s chest, like it’s the scariest thing he’s ever done, but once he’s done it nothing bad happens and he smiles.

Steve waits a minute.

“Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember when I was sick and you would—”

He doesn’t get to finish, because Bucky grabs his hand and drops it right onto his head, exactly where Steve wanted it to go. He smiles, fingers curling into Bucky’s hair. It’s soft like it’s been washed recently, and he realises it’s been trimmed a few inches, too. It’s easy to run his fingers through, and he finds his thumb has a habit of stroking at Buck’s jawline and brushing against his ear.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “You can sleep. Nothing bad will happen to you, baby, I promise.”

He thinks maybe the only reason the world doesn’t end right there is because Bucky is already out of it.

.

In the morning, Bucky is gone, but the sheets still smell like him.

Steve tries not to get his hopes up, even when Bucky returns three more times that week, bone tired and falling right into Steve like second-nature.

Then a week goes by and there’s nothing.

Then two.

.

“I just really think I should look—”

“And I think that’s a terrible idea. He said he needed time, right? He needs space. Maybe it was all just getting overwhelming.”

Steve knows Nat is right, but it doesn’t change the fact that he hates it. She’s still giving him a list of reasons why he shouldn’t take off after Bucky with no trail and no particular reason as to why, other than, _I miss him and I’m slightly concerned_—when Steve opens his door and finds Bucky inside.

He’s behind the stove.

Cooking.

Figures the first thing out of Steve’s mouth is, “You trying to burn my place down?”

“Please,” Bucky says. “If I was going to do that, I would—”

Steve cuts him off before Bucky can provide him with a detailed explanation as to how, exactly, he would go about burning down Steve’s building. “What are you doing? Where have you been?”

“I’m making your Ma’s potato casserole because I haven’t stopped craving it since… 1959. And I’ve been around. Not my fault you don’t know how to look over your damn shoulder, Rogers.” He pauses. “Natalia.”

She smirks. “Remus.”

That’s new. Steve looks between them. “Pardon?”

“Shut up,” Nat says, “you’re not part of this.”

That’s ridiculous considering it’s Steve’s apartment and all, but it’s worth it to see Nat and Bucky’s awkward hug; she initiates it, and his face scrunches up.

“What’s happening?”

“Affection.”

“Disgusting,” he says, but then he hugs her back.

In the end, they eat the casserole on the kitchen floor because Steve doesn’t have a table or chairs. Nat pulls out the bottle of Smirnoff she’d grabbed from their trip to the supermarket and, apparently, Steve is the only one who can’t get drunk.

Bucky pours three shots for each of them and says, “Odna charka na zdorov’e, drugaya na vesel’e, tret’a na vzdor.”

Steve tries not to think about the way the Russian falls out of his mouth like he was born speaking it. “What does that mean?”

Nat raises a glass. “One is for health, the second for fun, and the third one is for nothing.”

Bucky laughs, taps his glass to hers, and throws the shot back.

.

It’s two hours later when Nat leaves, promising to get coffee and take a cab. Steve knows she keeps things on her to counteract getting drunk, too, so he’s not that worried about letting her loose on New York City.

Bucky is reclined on the floor of Steve’s kitchen, not asleep but smiling dazedly up at him.

“What are you looking at, punk?”

Bucky sits up abruptly. “U tebya krasivoye litso,” he says, scowling. “Ya khochu potselovat’ tebya.”

“More Russian?”

“Tupoy mudak,” Bucky snaps. “Ya pytayus’ skazat’, chto lyublyu tebya.”

Steve shakes his head. “Great, thanks. You wanna come with me to the bed?”

Bucky blinks. “Trakhnut’ tebya?” He shrugs. “Konechno.”

Bucky lets Steve haul him to his feet and he doesn’t rip away when Steve starts leading him to the bedroom. He keeps muttering to himself in Russian, even after Steve lowers him onto the bed.

He reaches for Bucky’s belt and Bucky, honest to God, _giggles_.

“Buck, I—”

“Kakoy zhe vy nakhal,” Bucky laughs, and a smile looks so good on him Steve can’t help it when his lips quirk up, even if he has no idea what the fuck Bucky’s saying. “Vy mogli by po krayney mere snachala svodit’ menya v restoran.”

Steve leans over him, laughing. “Do me a favour and say that in English, huh?”

But then Bucky’s not saying anything; instead he’s yanking Steve down by his shirt and he’s kissing him.

It feels like every single atom in Steve’s body is exploding. It feels like his skin is on fire, like there’s an ocean in his stomach and it’s churning to the tidal will of _Bucky, Bucky, Bucky._ He can’t do anything but surrender to the warmth. Steve’s eyes are closed but he’s never felt more wide awake and alive.

He almost falls into Bucky, and Bucky is ready for that: he pulls Steve down and then there’s nothing but him and Steve, and they are touching everywhere, and Steve’s never dared draw them like this but he’s pictured it in his head a thousand times over.

“I _said_,” Bucky murmurs, “you could at least take me to dinner first.”

“That’s a little old-fashioned, don’t you think?” drops from Steve’s lips without thought, and Bucky’s back arches as he laughs, arcing right into Steve.

He slips his hand into the back pocket of Steve’s jeans. “Better? I saw it in an 80s movie.”

“When the hell did you have time to watch an 80s movie?”

“I watched several,” Bucky corrects. “Including and not limited to that really cheesy Captain America trilogy with Clint Eastwood—who’s in a bunch of other shit I ain’t had the time to watch yet, but damn, I don’t know if I’ll bother after that—”

The rest of his words are snuffed out with another kiss, and god, Steve doesn’t think he’s ever wanted anything more than he wants this, doesn’t think he’s ever felt like this in his whole life—volatile, but like he might explode inward rather than out.

But—

“You’re drunk.”

Bucky shakes his head, chasing Steve’s lips. “Not anymore.”

“Bucky—”

“Stevie,” Bucky pleads. “Come on, I’m good, I’m fine.”

But there’s a whole host of other reasons they can’t, shouldn’t, do this. Steve feels them all weigh him down, right into Bucky, and it’s so much and he’s so heavy thinking about it all.

Bucky puts his hands on either side of Steve’s face. “Hey, what is it?”

Steve shakes his head, can’t get it out, can’t let it go. “Bucky—Bucky, you _begged_ for me.”

In French, not Russian, he’d suffered and Steve had let it happen.

“Yeah, I begged for you,” he whispers, flesh and blood hand gently trailing down Steve’s neck, “but that’s nothing new.”

Steve forgets how to breathe for a minute.

“They hurt you—”

“So fix me,” Bucky says, open and alert but no less soft, “make it better.”

And that is not a request Steve could ever deny him, so he lets Bucky pull him back down, lets Bucky’s cold-warm hands get tangled up in his hair.

Falling into Bucky is like dying; the plunge takes his breath away, the cold burns his skin. There is no taste sweeter than the heaven on Bucky’s lips.

.

“There’s that look again.”

Steve snorts. “You can just call it _love_, Buck.”

.

“Bucky, it has fleas, don’t bring it inside—”

“How can you possibly say no to this face?”

“Pretty easy,” Steve shrugs. “It looks like it was smashed in with a trash can lid.”

Bucky scowls and strides past Steve toward the bathroom. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just a jealous jerk, isn’t he?”

.

“Do you—”

“I love you,” Steve promises. “I love you. You don’t ever have to ask.”

Bucky blooms like a flower under the rays of the sun. He chokes it out, strained and lilting, Steve’s lips sucking at the hollow of his collarbone. “I love you,” he returns, “I love you so bad, Stevie.”

He knows. He will always know.

.

“I left them here, I know I did.”

“Bucky,” Steve fries again, for the millionth time. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets to stave off the winter chill. “It’s okay, really.”

But Bucky isn’t listening. He turns full-circle in the alley and frowns at a particular spot in the wall. “Oh.”

“What?”

“I was remembering it backwards,” Bucky tells him.

He crouches down and yanks a couple of bricks straight out of the wall, and just like he’d described, safely tucked away are two leather-bound books: Steve’s full of sketches, Bucky’s full of words, both from a lifetime they’ve transcended.

“Okay,” Bucky says, hugging them both to his chest, “we should probably get back before Punkin wakes up the neighbours with her screaming—”

“Yeah, but are you gonna let me read it?”

“Read what?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

Steve nudges Bucky. Bucky nudges Steve. There’s too much force behind it and Steve hits the wall, and the terror on Bucky’s face is something missed because Steve just laughs.

“Steve—”

He pulls Bucky by the arm, crushes him right against him in a way that’s only comfortable with Buck because they fit like two jagged pieces weathered together. He nudges Bucky’s cold nose and smiles. “So how long were you writing about how much you loved me?”

Bucky looks down at the books and then back up at Steve. His face is red. “A long time.”

“Yeah? Like how long?”

“Like I came into the world with your name on my heart,” Bucky says, “and it only started beating the day I met you.”

And so Steve kisses him, because how can he not after being told a thing like that?

.

“Steve,” is a whisper in the night, followed by a shuffling as Bucky tucks himself under Steve’s arm. It is a whimper when Bucky’s underneath him looking up like Steve is the sky, like he is the Earth, like they have finally met and even if it is to be their ruination, it’s worth it.

“Steve,” is a mumble, falling from Bucky’s lips as he sleeps. It is a yell, when the nightmares get real bad and Bucky’s terror rips through the tranquil of the night.

“Steve,” is a name, followed by a smile, followed by forever—

—and at the end of the line, always, there is “Bucky.”

. 

I’m not a poet, but if I were I’d talk about all the ways you drive me crazy; when you’re yelling at the top of your lungs, when your eyes are lit with fire, when you smile at me, soft as anything. I’d tell you about how I love you like scars—it’s a faded old thing but I can still remember the cut, I can still feel the heat. I’d talk about how even covered in the paint of war you are a work of art, an accidental masterpiece created with eyes closed. I could keep going for forever; how I want to kiss you slow and kiss you rough and kiss you like it’s nothing; how I want to breathe with you, how I want to bleed with you, how I want to die with you. But mostly, I think, how I’d really like to live with you.

.

VENDI

VIDI 

AMAVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u so much for reading!! feedback keeps me alive lmao

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! please PLEASE leave a comment with your thoughts, it would mean the world to me <3


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